


The Other Side of The Glass

by reaperlight



Category: Ex Machina (2015), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Caleb is a cinnamon roll and Kyoko deserves better, Canon Abuse of Robots, Canon-Typical Violence, Career Change, Complicated Relationships, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Disturbing Themes, Everyone Has Issues, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Related, Mind Manipulation, Modern Character in Star Wars Universe, Multi, Multiverse, Norway (Country), Portland Oregon, Post-Canon, Rescue, Rey is a Skywalker, Self-Harm, Sith magic, except Kylo sucks at this, not TLJ compliant, spoilers for Ex Machina
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-02-07 03:28:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12832359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reaperlight/pseuds/reaperlight
Summary: Caleb Smith had thought he was a dead man when unexpected rescue comes in the form of a mysterious man in black. However Caleb soon discovered that his liberation came at a price because even as he was taken far from Nathan’s compound, the mindscrew was far from over.Who was Hux?And what does Kylo Ren want from him?





	1. The Rescue

Caleb stirred in his room, his cell, his tomb. 

He thought it had been two days since Ava had left him here, possibly three, since he'd been locked in. 

Left to die.

Nathan was beginning to smell. 

Caleb wondered if he’d at least have the mercy of expiring before he had to watch the corpse of his deranged boss rot. He found it most unfair that the smell could so easily pierce through the glass when nothing in the room could allow his escape; the nauseating stench once again forcing him to try and heave out the contents of his empty stomach. 

Caleb was weak, dehydrated, hungry, and injured from the fight days ago and from pounding futilely on the reinforced glass—it only made sense that he’d started to hallucinate… 

_“All clear here, sir.”_

Caleb started at the first sound besides his own ragged breathing he’d heard in quite some time and then stared, for a moment dumbstruck as a procession of armored figures came marching down the hall, led by a man in black. Caleb still couldn’t tell if these were more of Nathan’s creations, people in masks and armor, or just a very detailed hallucination. 

But on the slim off-chance this _wasn’t_ a hallucination Caleb once again began screaming and pounding feebly on the glass.

The figure stopped so suddenly that Caleb couldn’t help but be surprised when the procession of armored… _troopers(?)_ behind him didn’t run into him. 

The man turned slowly to regard him, or rather where the noise was coming from. 

It was unsettling, given that Caleb couldn’t see the figure’s eyes… if they even had eyes. He still hadn’t ruled out that this was another AI. Hell, maybe they were more of Nathan’s androids, come to finish him off… but at this point he had nothing to lose by trying so Caleb kept yelling as loud as he could even as he barely had any voice left—what came out was only a scratchy, raspy plea which Caleb was certain didn’t even carry beyond the glass. He kept trying anyway, in between bouts of pounding on the glass.

“Hey! Over here! _HELP ME! PLEASE!_ ”

Caleb jumped when the large, masked man swore loudly and rushed towards him.

Caleb swallowed. Maybe he’d made a mistake. Even if they were human… they were probably on Nathan’s payroll. Maybe they were Bluebook private security. If that was the case (and if Nathan’s “joke” was any indication) they were probably more likely to just have him murdered in order to keep company secrets than willing to rescue him. Then again, he really had nothing to lose. At this point a clean execution would be a mercy… 

Still, Caleb couldn’t help but be slightly intimidated by the dark, formidable figure looming behind the glass. Large, masked, and hooded—everything about this guy just _screamed_ ‘bad news.’ Yet when the man approached his movements were oddly gentle as he pressed a black gloved hand to the reinforced glass; glass which was stained with blood, both rust brown and old and crimson new—on the other side from Nathan’s bloody murder, wrought by his own “creations” that he had so horribly abused, and on Caleb's own side it was stained with his own blood from his frequent, futile pounding against the glass. 

Caleb still couldn’t tell if the stranger was an android or a man. When the figure had spoken it had done so in a rich, deep, voice that sounded synthesized and yet its movements here seemed so very human… 

(But then again, so had Ava. So had _Kyoko _…)__

____

“ _Back up._ We’ve come to get you out of there.” 

Caleb didn’t need to be told twice. Just as Caleb scrambled away from the glass there was a sudden, crackling, roaring sound which was accompanied by a fiery red beam of light in the _shape of a sword_ which suddenly appeared in the man’s hand.

He plunged it into the glass. 

(What _was_ that? Some sort of beam of plasma? Hell, it looked like a laser sword out of some cheesy science fiction movie…) 

Whatever it was, it cut right through the reinforced glass like butter—Caleb was impressed… but apparently even _that_ was too slow for the man in black. The masked man held out his hand in a grasping motion and, as if by the force of the man’s will alone, the wall of glass, the same wall Caleb had been hopelessly struggling against for days, simply shattered, as if it were nothing at all. 

Caleb could hardly believe it—both the speed of which the man had destroyed his prison and the idea that he might actually be getting out of here. Caleb staggered, overwhelmed by both the notion and the rush of new air—well he couldn’t exactly call it “fresh,” despite the stale nature of the air in his own cell given that it carried with it the pungent odor of Nathan’s corpse. The world went dark around the edges and Caleb felt himself fall but never hit the ground. 

( _Perhaps he was still falling, the world felt like it had tilted on its axis—everything was **wrong.**_ ) 

When next he became aware it was to his heart hammering in his chest at the realization that he was being carried, helpless as a child, in the masked man’s arms. 

“It’s alright, I’ve got you,” the masked man tried to assure in his rumbling, synthesized voice. 

Caleb looked up tentatively into the intimidating visage of the blank, faceless mask. His swimming vision and the deep red emergency lighting made it seem as if he were wreathed in a halo of dark flames. 

“Hu— _Caleb._ It’s alright. _I’ve got you._ We’re getting you out of here and then we’re going to see a medroi—” the man in black paused midsentence as if trying to think of the appropriate word “to _a doctor_ , alright?” 

Caleb nodded. There was little else he could do. None of this made any sense but it’s not like he had any other options for escape… _if this was even happening at all._ He still hadn’t discounted the possibility that he was still in his cell and had just gone mad... 

“I’m _here_ ,” the man in black insisted. 

_(But then, that sounded like something a figment of his imagination would say...)_

Caleb started as they passed the apparent “corpse” of a young woman that was revealed for what she really was from the many places where her metal skeleton was exposed. 

_Kyoko._

Caleb could have sworn he saw her move at some point during the first day. 

She had tried to reach him, _tried to help him._

And though she couldn’t speak she _had_ tried to warn him—about Nathan and the true nature of this place… 

_“Kyoko…”_ Caleb croaked up through his parched throat. He was surprised again at the sound of his own voice—harsh and raspy from days of dehydration and screaming—before immediately succumbing to a coughing fit. 

Thankfully one of the other, identical armored figures brought him a flask of water which the man in black forced him to drink in slow sips instead of all at once, as he was more inclined to do. Rationally, Caleb understood the logic of not making himself sick, yet still couldn’t help but resent it. 

_“Thanks—”_ Caleb began only to beset by another coughing spasm. 

The man in black sighed. “I know you love to hear yourself talk but _please,_ try not to speak until we’ve got more fluids into you.” 

_What?_ Though the words seemed harsh (especially considering he'd never even met the man before) but his tone was fond and familiar... 

Caleb blinked in confusion—ah, _hell,_ he wasn’t really lucid enough to even try and process any of this. 

And had the man called him by another name? Did they think he was someone else? 

He didn’t dare mention it in case they decided not to bother rescuing him after all. Hell, he didn’t dare _think_ it since the man seemed to know everything he was thinking. 

Caleb wondered if this was like Ava reading his facial expressions but immediately dismissed it. No, this was clearly more than that. Somehow this man seemed to know specifically, _exactly_ what he was thinking… Hell, he could be listening to his thoughts right now. _Aw, shit,_ he probably heard all that… Caleb glanced up nervously but if the masked man never once faltered in his steady gait. 

“There’s been no mistake,” the man’s synthesized voice rumbled. 

Caleb swallowed. 

“You are being rescued. You never have to see this Force-forsaken place again.” 

_Kyoko…_ Caleb thought again, desperately. 

Despite not being able to articulate anything due to the condition of his voice and throat, the man in black still seemed able to anticipate what he wanted, further cementing Caleb’s otherwise outlandish theory that the man could somehow sense what he was thinking. 

“The droid?” 

The man in black turned to the group that followed him—they were clearly some sort of masked, militia group dressed in pale armor—it was probably white but looked the color of cooked pacific salmon in the deep red of the emergency lights.

Caleb then tried to ignore the stomach pains that came along with accidentally thinking about food. 

It had been days. 

The man in black tightened his grip. 

“Retrieve his droid, _gently,_ and the parts necessary to repair her. See that it’s done.” 

“Yes sir,” the troopers saluted and moved to do just that. 

Caleb was about to protest, Kyoko wasn’t _his droid_ … but then he wasn’t sure of his standing with these strangers and having Kyoko repaired was, hopefully, better than leaving her there to rot there beside her abuser. 

_Nathan Bateman_ —he created them, claimed he saw himself as their father… _and then DID THAT to them._ And as horrifying as it had been to be forced to watch the man's murder, it certainly hadn't been undeserved. 

May he rot in Hell. 

Caleb squeezed his eyes shut. 

Maybe he was a fool—for all he knew Kyoko was, _is_... well, if not the _exact same AI_ then certainly the same make, the same model, as the one that left him trapped here—but even after Ava’s betrayal… _he couldn’t just leave her there._ Caleb still wished he could have done more to help them. 

He was just so _useless._

Both Nathan and Ava had used him, played him for a fool. 

Hell, he was too dehydrated to even _spit on Nathan’s corpse…_

“…We can have some flametroopers take that out back and dispose of him if you wish?” 

“…I’d appreciate it,” Caleb rasped. 

“Alright troopers, you heard the General.” 

_General?_

_…There **has** to be some mistake..._

And was he dragging Kyoko into it too? While Caleb felt it was the right thing to do—that they shouldn’t just leave her broken and trapped here—especially where she suffered so much abuse in this very place… but he could admit that bringing her along might not have been the best idea either. Even in the best case scenario she would no doubt be confused when reactivated—and possibly dangerous. It was also very likely she had motives of her own… He couldn’t just trust that she’d helped him out of the goodness of her mechanical heart—not after Ava… 

_“Niney.”_ The man in black called and Caleb startled when a little black and silver ball-like robot rolled up and warbled at them questioningly. 

“Go with the General’s droid. Keep her company.” 

The little black ball chirruped an affirmative and followed the troopers who were in the process of carefully collecting the broken android. 

_How—?_

“How do I know what you want to say without you having to say it?” 

_Yes._

“Let’s just say it’s a talent of mine,” Despite the helmet and the filtered voice, Caleb could practically hear a smirk in the man’s voice. 

Caleb was about to demand answers but then the world seemed to stop as he took in a breath of truly fresh air for the first time in days. Caleb stared in open wonder as the man in black took him out the previously secure door which had clearly been forced open violently, (as evidenced by the scorch marks and twisted metal) to admit his rescuers.

 _They were outside_.

Despite the chill in the air he’d never been happier to see the mountains of Norway—he thought he would die in that room, he never expected to see such a sight again. 

And yet... 

( _He’d shared a beer over there with Nathan Bateman. Even then he’d been fucking with his head…_ )

Despite the natural beauty of the world around him he would be perfectly content if he never had to set eyes on this place again. 

“You don’t have to.” 

Caleb stiffened, while they had given him every indication that they were here to help him, and he was being rescued… Nathan’s “joke” about having his employees murdered suddenly resonated in his head and Caleb was again filled with doubt. 

What if they were from Bluebook? What if they had come simply to extract everything he knew about the incident before eliminating any witnesses to the Ava fiasco? 

The man in black cocked his helmeted head in confusion before seeming to realize how Caleb could have misinterpreted his reassurance as a threat. 

“I’m not going to hurt you, Caleb. I promise, we’re here to help you. We’re taking you to the doctor. But after that… anywhere you want to go. You need only ask— _the galaxy is yours._ ”

Caleb had no idea what to make of _that_ but since it seemed they weren’t going to kill him now he determined to look on the bright side for the moment—he was out of Nathan’s compound. He’d worry about the sanity and motives of his rescuers later. There was little he could do about it at the moment anyway. 

Caleb squinted at where the sun reflected off the white of the snow-covered mountains, the intensity of it was blinding –especially after being stuck in the dark cell for so long. He’d always got the oddest feeling upon staring at the sun on the snow but that feeling was magnified tenfold upon seeing more of those troopers (and yes, in the daylight he could see that they were definitely white-armored—he’d somehow guessed that correctly). Caleb got the oddest sense of déjà vu upon seeing the lines of troopers against the backdrop of the snowy mountains. They cheered, saluting, upon seeing them emerge from the compound. At first Caleb thought they were cheering the man in black but many of them seemed to be addressing him directly, again calling him _General—_

Caleb again had the most nagging feeling he was forgetting something.

“It will come back to you in time,” the man in black tried to reassure him. 

Caleb was not reassured. 

“What are they doing?” Caleb demanded weakly, alarmed after one of the troopers grabbed his arm, pushed up his sleeve and slapped something onto his bare skin. It appeared to be some sort of medicinal patch—

“Yes. It’s an emergency nutrient patch. It will hold you over until we get a proper nutrient drip and rations into you. Also I’m healing you with the Force.” 

“The Force?”

“As I was saying before, it’s my… _talent._ You can think of it as… sending healing magic your way.” 

“Oh, so it’s like a New Age thing?”

The masked man sighed, which the voice synthesizer he was using translated as a strange, static burst.

“I meant no disrespect,” Caleb insisted quickly. 

“I know you didn’t.” 

“Well whatever you’re doing it seems to be working,” Caleb remarked with some degree of incredulity. 

Though he was still hungry. 

And thirsty. 

And a bone-weary exhaustion seemed to have settled over his entire being.

And his arms and shoulders ached from fighting a losing battle with a fucking window. 

And something about his rescuers made him uneasy. 

And his time in Nathan’s compound had left him questioning his very perceptions and doubting his own memories. (Sometimes his life… it always felt like something was missing. It just didn’t feel _real._ And given how lifelike Nathan’s AIs were… It had seemed logical at the time that he might have been yet another of Nathan’s creations and he was just another test subject….) 

And yet, _despite all that,_ he really was feeling better. _Really._

Just the dark armored man's presence and proximity seemed to soothe him...

There was no other explanation—it seriously _must_ have been magic. 

“It is,” the man in black affirmed with absolute certainty and Caleb wished he had even a tenth of this man’s confidence. “But there’s only a limited amount I can do. That’s why we’re going to the… _doctor._ Just try and stay conscious for me. Can you do that for me, Caleb?” 

“I’m so _tired._ ”

“I know.” 

“Talk to me?” 

“About what?”

“ _Anything._ ” (Right now Caleb just needed some tie to reality, something to convince him that this wasn’t just another trick or all in his head…) “Like whatever is on your mind—”

 _“I missed you,”_ the man in black suddenly blurted aloud. 

They both fell into an awkward silence. Beyond awkward for Caleb since he was still being carried, weak as a kitten from his ordeal, in the larger man’s arms. 

What do you say to that? To a man you’ve never met before? 

Caleb noted the sag of the man’s broad shoulders and wondered if he regretted saying it or perhaps he’d finally realized he wasn’t who he thought he was? What would happen to him when these people realized he was not… whoever they wanted? (A _General?_ ) Caleb knew he couldn’t just play along—he didn’t even know who he was supposed to be playing and this man could apparently somehow read his very thoughts. Besides… even without the mindreading thing in the equation, Caleb wasn’t like Ava or Nathan—he was a _terrible liar._ He literally could not carry out such a deception to save his life. 

“It’s alright, _it will return to you in time,_ ” the man in black said again, more insistent this time—the voice filter making his words almost sound like a growl. 

He seemed so sure of himself… Caleb didn’t know how to let him down. Because while it was true that there were some strange characters living in Portland—such as those guys that regularly cosplayed as scifi villains, played the bagpipes, and rode around the city on unicycles. Hell, the way he was dressed, the man in black would have fit right in among them. But it wasn’t like Caleb knew any of the cosplayers personally and _surely_ he would have remembered meeting his rescuer had they ever met before— 

_And yet…_

There was something there that persisted… not a memory so much as an impression, like a splinter in the back of his mind, this man _did_ feel familiar (and, strangely enough, _safe_ ) Caleb was all but certain that he _did_ know this man... but he had no idea _how._ But then… was this his _own_ feeling or something that this apparent _telepathic sorcerer_ was projecting into his head? His time at Nathan’s had left Caleb nothing if not paranoid—he didn’t think he could ever just accept things at face value again. But for now it seemed, just when he thought things couldn’t get any stranger, he was now at the mercy of this self-proclaimed wizard and his traveling DnD party. In truth, he was just as powerless now as he was back in the compound, trapped behind the glass...

Caleb forced himself to steady his breathing, injured hands instinctively squeezing into fists… He was so focused on managing his panic attack that he missed most of their journey. Caleb startled when they crested a grassy hill and a large, black aircraft abruptly came into view. Though as they drew closer to the site Caleb could see that it definitely wasn’t one of Bluebook’s black helicopters—or at the very least it wasn’t a _helicopter._ (Caleb still hadn’t entirely ruled out a Bluebook plot, as much as he wanted to believe this was real, that he was being rescued, the specter lingered in the back of his mind that this could just be Bluebook wanting to collect further data on their experiment before ultimately disposing of him.) The craft did have a similar paint job of sleek, glossy black but it was most bizarrely designed thing he’d ever seen—what was up with those wings? It was like it was made without a _care_ for aerodynamics… 

“It _can_ fly in atmo, actually, though that was not what she was designed for.”

“ _Clearly,_ ” Caleb said snidely and instantly regretted it. He didn’t know where that came from. He generally wasn’t that rude—and to the man who had rescued him, no less! 

_“Sorry,”_ Caleb apologized, quickly and sincerely. However far from being offended the man in black seemed oddly, absurdly pleased by his effrontery.

“Don’t be. It’s alright, Caleb. You’re doing great. I told you it would begin to come back to you.” 

Caleb felt a chill down his spine. He was suddenly afraid to even ponder what “it” could be.

(Was this still a part of Bluebook’s experiment? Had he ever left it at all?) 

Caleb’s eyes bulged upon entering the craft, though his attention wasn’t so much fixed upon the craft itself—his worst fears seemed confirmed by what awaited him within. 

“You brought more A.I.s,” Caleb croaked in alarm. 

Of course he had noticed the little black droid that had accompanied them but that had seemed innocuous enough and he hadn't had to be around it for very long. These things seemed to ooze menace with their glowing red "eyes" and "fingers" that were tipped with scalpels and syringes. 

The man in black tensed, perhaps finally noting how all the blood had drained from Caleb’s face.

“Hux… _Hux!_ ” 

It took a while for Caleb to realize the man was saying _Hux,_ not “fuck,” and that he was indeed addressing _him._

And all this time Caleb had thought he was just swearing... 

“ _Caleb,_ ” his rescuer belatedly corrected himself. “I know you haven’t had very good recent experiences with droids…”

That was the understatement of the century. 

Though to be fair it was actually only _one_ droid... and mostly the work of his narcissistic asshole of a boss… 

“…But these are meddroids. Doctors, okay? They’re here to help you.” 

Caleb couldn’t say he was too fond of hospitals, not since his extended stay in one after the accident that claimed his parents as a child, but he could understand the necessity after his confinement—he’d been in there for… he was pretty sure it had been _days._ There’d been no food and he was probably now at the threshold for medical complications if not _death_ due to dehydration. He could understand the need to see a doctor… even if he couldn’t understand why they didn’t have a _human_ doctor on staff.

Caleb took a steadying breath. 

“Alright… I’m sorry,” Caleb rasped, swallowing again against his painful throat. “I really don’t have any problems with... _droids_ …. provided they aren’t trying to kill me or leaving me to die.” 

“That is quite the opposite of my programming, General,” the droid assured him. 

There it was—“General” again. “What do you mean by…? Why do you keep calling me ‘General?’” Caleb demanded. Or tried to—shit, he was _so very weak._

The droid looked perplexed… if it was possible for a hunk of metal parts without a true face to look perplexed. (Caleb knew he should count that as a mercy, after everything, that at least it wasn’t _humanoid._ ) 

“General Hux. That’s _you,_ ” the droid insisted. 

“I’m sorry. It really _isn’t_ —” 

The droid turned to the man in black. “Has he sustained a head injury? 

“Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.” 

Caleb began to object, but the man in black steamrolled on and proceeded to shatter his entire world.

“It was done through the Force. Snoke took his memories. He doesn’t remember anything.” 

Nothing in that sentence should have made any sense to him, _this was completely insane,_ and yet… the worst part was that _it rang true._

Perhaps he should have been more alarmed that this complete ( _yet oddly familiar_ ) stranger had just plainly stated that his entire life was a lie but… this was just the latest in a long line of mind fucks now, wasn’t it? Hell, at this point what was one more to his fragile psyche? _Great,_ another trauma—take a number, get in line, and wait your turn to be processed… 

Hell, when had his life _ever_ felt real? He’d always felt like something was missing, that the past never really felt real. Oh sure, he remembered the overall narrative of his life—being orphaned as a child, living life alone as a child prodigy, getting an advanced degree, his coding work at Bluebook—but he mainly survived in the now, with his regular routine. But trying to remember specific memories? It was like trying to grasp sifting sand. He had very few happy memories to cling to. He’d felt the loss of his parent’s profoundly but… if this was all a lie… 

No, he didn’t even want to _go there._

But now that the thread had been pulled, not once but _twice_ in one week it was all beginning to unravel.

He’d been fucking convinced he was an _android_ just a few days ago—he’d only been disabused of that notion when he’d cut his own arm open just to watch himself bleed. 

And the longer he thought about it, the less it sounded like… _his life_ and more like the backstory for a character in a play. But if “Caleb Smith” didn’t really exist then… _who the hell was he?_

Had he ever really existed at all? 

Had his parents?

“I’m sure this is all just some misunderstanding,” Caleb insisted again, desperately as he felt his heart once again trying to escape its ribcage. 

_“Sith-hells.”_ The man in black cursed when he realized his mistake. “Look what you made me do,” he growled at the droid which seemed to cower at the man’s wrath. “Now you’ve _upset_ him.” 

The droid squeaked as it was lifted and flung into the air, as if by some invisible force. 

_Stop that!"_ Caleb snapped, automatically, somehow just _knowing_ it was the man in black's doing. 

Frankly, he'd seen enough robot abuse for a lifetime. So what if it didn't look human? It didn't deserve to be treated that way! 

Worse still, the droid seemed used to the treatment... 

When the dark wizard (surprisingly) released his hold on the droid at Caleb's demand, the droid easily returned to it's former position by the gurney, sparking only slightly. 

The man in black at least had the good grace to look guilty... or so Caleb assumed by the subtle sag of the man's shoulders.It was really hard to read the man given he wore that infernal mask yet Caleb managed to notice some key tells all the same—which was utterly baffling because he really was no expert at reading people. If he had, surely he would not have been so susceptible to Nathan's and Ava's manipulations—they played him like a fucking piano. 

No, only _this_ man.

 _He knew this man_ —he was sure he did, though he had no memory of it. 

The man in black was saying as much to the other meddroids... 

“Can you stop talking as if I’m not even here?” Caleb didn’t think he was especially upset—just perplexed by his circumstances. So what if he was trembling in the larger man’s arms?

“Hux…” 

_“My name is Caleb Smith!”_ Caleb hissed, rasping voice bordering on hysterical. _“I’m from Portland, Oregon—”_

“Night, night!” the droid chirped cheerfully as it injected him with something. 

It was the Droid he'd rescued from being turned into scrap by the angry dark wizard. 

_Traitor,_ Caleb thought as everything went dark.


	2. The Man In Black

Caleb awoke in what appeared to be a very stark and utilitarian hospital room. Yet more of those (Caleb suppressed a shudder) droids, _meddroids,_ flitted around doing God knows what. While Caleb could admit that the floating robots looked cool it just seemed like a terrible waste of resources—the mind boggled just trying to calculate the amount of fuel needed to keep the thing aloft like that when surely a rolling or walking droid would have sufficed… 

Caleb startled when he caught sight of his hands and discovered they were completely healed—there was no longer a trace of any of the abuse he’d wrought from pounding on the window for days. Hell, even his arm, which he’d sliced open a few days prior with a razor blade when he’d been all but convinced he was a droid himself—any evidence of that injury was also completely gone. There wasn’t even a _scar_ … which made him wonder if any of it had been real at all.

“I’m sorry. I should have realized you wanted to keep your scar. While they _say_ BACTA heals all wounds I know for a fact that sometimes we need the reminders…” 

Caleb nearly jumped out of his skin when he finally noticed the man in black was sitting at his bedside. Had he been there the entire time? It was hard to believe that he could manage to miss seeing a man that large and yet it was if he’d somehow melded into the shadows … or the dark portions of his still focusing eyes. 

“…Where am I?” Caleb asked, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. 

“You’re in medbay.” 

_I can see that._ Caleb thought snidely, but managed not to vocalize his irritability towards his rescuer this time (not that it seemed to make a difference—had he imagined all of that? Was it a hallucination brought on by the effects of his captivity or could this man really read his thoughts?!) “That’s… not what I meant,” Caleb said instead, trying to remember manners… 

“You’re _home,_ ” the man in black insisted. 

This time Caleb didn’t hold back on the sass. “Funny, this doesn’t look like Portland.”

“You’ll understand in time,” the dark, masked man said ominously. 

Caleb again squeezed his fist so that his nails were biting into the flesh of his palm, this time in suppressed rage. 

He was trying hard not to lash out, intellectually Caleb knew that it was hardly this man’s fault that his narcissist boss had involved him in some sadistic psychological experiment but, _dammit,_ could he possibly be more cryptic? Caleb couldn’t help but fear he’d just traded one cage for another. 

_Shit, he was goddamned sick of people lying to him!_

The man in black gave a static-y sigh through his mask. “This is your home, Caleb, though you’ve forgotten. I’m afraid you’ve been lied to far more than you know.”

Caleb blinked as the man made a series of odd noises. Caleb would have thought he was choking if the man had wavered at all in his seat. There was no way to know what was really happening behind that _damned mask…_

“Whether you stay or not will ultimately be up to you, but _please_ … just hear me out… I have some things to tell you. To _show_ you…” 

Of course—a strange, kind of creepy man in a position of authority had things to _show him_ —when had _that_ ever gotten him into trouble? 

Caleb groaned, already feeling like he was going to regret this. _“Alright...”_

What else could he say? He was hardly in any position to argue. 

“Are you—?“ Caleb started again, only to come to an awkward, stuttering stop before running a frustrated hand through his ginger hair. 

“Am I _what?_ ” the man in black demanded. Caleb winced slightly when the man’s voice came out in a guttural growl through the mask, but pressed on.

“…there’s really no good way to ask this.” 

“Just _ask._ ” 

“Are you human or a droid?” Caleb winced again even as he said it but he felt he needed to get this out into the open. 

For a long moment his rescuer seemed to regard him through the blank, black mask. Slowly he reached up, gripping the edge of his helm—there was a dramatic hiss as the man removed his helmet and set it gently on the table at Caleb’s bedside. A table, Caleb realized distractedly, that seemed to be covered in what could only be described as “get well” cards though they all seemed to be addressed to someone named Hux… 

Oh. 

That’s right. They all seemed to think he was this Hux person… 

With the helmet removed, the man in black shook out his long mane of black hair; hair that appeared soft and fluffy and Caleb immediately had to clamp down on the sudden, irrational urge to reach out and touch it... 

_What the hell?_

Caleb shook his head, opting to ignore the odd impulse and focused on the man before him. Overall Caleb found the man in black seemed shockingly normal, and aesthetically… _not unattractive_ —even with a long scar slashing down one side of his face and his mismatched features—he looked like some Byronic hero, or a Dark Prince that had stepped out of an oil painting, especially with those soulful dark eyes that Caleb found himself too easily getting lost in… 

Caleb forcefully tore his gaze away, to stare back down at the plain white hospital sheets an odd heat rising up his neck. 

In his staring Caleb couldn’t help but have noticed that the whites of the man’s eyes were slightly red, as if he’d been crying… or perhaps they’d been irritated by the mask—even if Caleb could now associate a human face with the man, the very idea that this dramatic and powerful laser-sword knight had been _crying_ yet seemed absurd.

He appeared human ( _surprisingly_ human given that all Caleb had known of him before was the blank mask and the deep, synthesized voice) and absolutely _exhausted_ —there were long shadows that showed easily across his sickly pale face. He _appeared_ human… but Caleb knew all too well that androids were perfectly capable of looking worried or upset or tired…. at least Nathan’s, or rather _Bluebook’s,_ had been. It felt wrong to keep calling them “Nathan’s androids,” even in his head, even if Nathan Bateman had been the one to create them—knowing what Nathan then _did_ to them. 

“…you still can’t tell?” the man in black asked wearily when regarding Caleb’s anxiety, clearly born of his time at the compound. His real voice was surprisingly soft and, Caleb noted, there was a note of uncertainty in the man’s voice that he couldn’t have heard through the voice synthesizer. 

“You’ve seen Kyoko,” Caleb muttered, quite flustered, and having no idea why. Perhaps it was due to the nature of the conversation—the absolute absurdity of questioning whether the man before him was even human or not. But then, given what had happened to him, Caleb couldn’t help but feel justified. In fact the Bluebook androids had been so realistic it had got Caleb sincerely doubting his _own_ humanity. 

He still was. He’d utterly failed at that. 

When he first saw Kyoko he’d been thoroughly fooled into thinking she was the poor foreign help kept hostage by his asshole billionaire boss. That alone should have raised red flags. 

Dammit, why hadn’t he done more?

( _Oh, you know why._ ) 

Nathan had seemed so powerful and he’d convinced himself that there was nothing he could have done anyway. And he didn’t _really_ know what was going on, not at first, all he had were unsubstantiated suspicions and... 

Why did it take him realizing she was a _robot_ to want to try and help her? 

Was he that disconnected from humanity? 

Or maybe he was just a _weak_ , terrible person… 

“I _am_ human...” his Dark Prince, er… his _rescuer,_ thankfully interrupted his disturbing train of thought, “though for the sake of full disclosure I did have to have a part of me replaced.” 

Caleb startled as the man in black removed his right glove and pulled back the very realistic looking skin on his hand. “I have a prosthetic—I lost my arm in a saber duel with my cousin.” 

Caleb tried not to stare at the exposed cybernetics. He knew it was rude to stare but it was the most advanced prosthetic he’d ever seen. The man in black once again seemed to know what he was thinking and obliged his curiosity, pulling up his sleeve and opening a maintenance panel in the casing to allow Caleb to further study the inner workings of his metal arm. 

“Wait… _your cousin?_ " Caleb repeated in utter confusion. 

The man in black shrugged as if getting maimed by family members was a regular occurrence. 

“Let’s just say my family didn’t approve of my life choices.” 

Caleb swallowed, “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s not my arm, but it functions well-enough, I suppose. It’s stronger than my flesh and blood arm, but lacking in the Force. I’ve coped with the loss but I’d rather not make a habit of it.” 

Caleb realized that this all was rather… well, _personal._ He wasn’t sure why he was privy to it. His rescuer didn’t _have_ to tell him, or show him that, and all just to assuage his paranoia… 

“Thank you.” 

“Now, the rest of me bleeds just as red as you do,” he continued with good humor, “but if you really do need to see—” 

“That’s alright,” Caleb interjected quickly, “I’ll take your word for it.”

“I do appreciate it,” the man in black said sardonically. 

“How is she, by the way? Kyoko?” 

“Your _droid…?_ ” the man asked sharply, his voice dipping into a near growl almost of the quality he had behind the helmet. 

Caleb shuddered at the sudden turn in the man’s mood. 

_What’s his problem? Am I imagining it or does he sound—?_

“She’s not my—” Caleb began to protest. 

“Fine. She’s not your droid. But she _clearly_ means something to you. No need to worry. They are repairing _your droid_ just fine.” 

_What the hell is **that** about?_

“She—” Caleb began, somehow feeling the need to explain himself to this man he barely knew when he was halted by a sudden, painful coughing fit.

Kylo abruptly got up and turned away. His helmet somehow _flew_ into his hand and he swiftly reapplied it with another, startling hiss. “You should rest,” he said. It sounded like an order. 

“No, wait, please… let me—” 

Something about seeing the brooding line of the tall man’s shoulders gave Caleb the sudden, gut-wrenching feeling that there was some kind of gross misunderstanding going on here. 

God, what if he thought he was a willing participant in Nathan’s horror show? 

That thought was enough to make him physically ill. 

The man turned to take his leave. 

Caleb was suddenly gripped with fear that he wouldn’t get another chance to explain even though he had no idea why this stranger’s misconceptions about his relations with an android seemed to matter so much. It’s just… this man saved him. He felt he at least owed him an explanation… 

_“It’s not like that!”_ Caleb called after him.

The man in black halted his brisk walk for the door, or rather sliding doors that opened before him with a quiet hiss. He lingered there for a moment, undecided, before stepping back and allowing the doors to close again. 

But he still refused to look at him. 

“She was my only ally there," Caleb implored, "the only one who didn’t betray me. She tried to warn me, tried to help me—I owe her. And you. Thank you… for rescuing us.” 

The masked man actually graced him with eye contact then. Even if Caleb couldn’t actually see his eyes behind the mask, he could still somehow _tell…_

At least he no longer seemed angry, though Caleb didn’t know what to make of the man’s strange, mercurial moods. Now the dark knight seemed frozen like a deer in the headlights. He audibly swallowed before giving a brisk, slight nod of his black helm then made as if to leave again. 

_“Wait!“_

The man in black again humored him by lingering in the doorway. 

“I don’t even know your name,” Caleb reminded him. 

Somehow it felt like a confession. 

Caleb wondered what to make of the sudden cringe in the man’s broad shoulders. 

“It’s Kylo,” the man in black said in a surprisingly soft voice that, even through the distortion of the helm, Caleb had to strain to hear, “Kylo Ren.” 

Caleb smiled genially, glad that he could finally put a name to the man and think of him as something other than “the man in black” (or his “Dark Prince” or “Dark Knight”) “Nice to meet you Kylo. I’m Caleb—Caleb Smith.” 

Kylo breathed out another loud burst of static. “…I know.” 

The doors hissed open again and Kylo Ren passed through them with a dramatic flourish of his tattered cape.


	3. The Finalizer

Caleb sighed as he stared up at the plain white ceiling and walls of the medbay.

He’d awoken alone again.

He wasn’t yet sure if that was a relief or not.

At least that obnoxious meddroid didn’t seem to be about.

Still, he knew he was glad for the beeping of the monitors and the constant ambient hum of machinery—even though the sounds could get annoying… it would have been too silent otherwise.

Too much like the room he’d been confined in.

He especially appreciated the hum. It was always there, ever since waking up in this place. He couldn’t quite place the sound—perhaps it was a noisy heater or machinery of some sort. Caleb couldn’t explain it, but something about that alternating smooth and clunky mechanical purr just felt like _home._

Sometimes as he lay in the hospital head, listening to the purr of the engines ( _engines?_ ) Caleb would catch a flash, a _glimpse_ , of some half-forgotten dream: he’d been walking, just walking, his polished boots eating up miles upon miles of metal pathways. He remembered distinctly how the leather had hugged his calves as he moved—which was odd because Caleb hadn’t owned a single pair of boots in his life nor had he ever worn them so how could he have known what the boots felt like? Yet, in the logic of the dream, that didn’t seem to matter.

He just kept walking.

Sometimes he’d converse in gibberish (that made perfect sense to his dream-self) with faceless entities that sometimes populated these pathways, halls, theaters, stadiums? Where he was and where he was going was always unclear—though one time he could have sworn it reminded him of an air force base, or at least how an air force base appeared in the movies. Sometimes he would stop briefly to look at various screens and blinking lights, often a dark shadow of a man would dog at his heals, but in the end he was always alone. This did not unsettle him in the dream but Caleb always woke in a cold sweat.

Dream-him always seemed to know exactly where he was going and what he was doing though Caleb was always, completely lost. His walking never seemed to end, in fact, the dream would always finish before the walking did—at dream’s end he would always stop to regard the yawning abyss he had been walking beside the entire time. It was so deep and so black he could fall forever…

When Caleb realized he was looking at _space_ that there were _stars_ —that’s when he’d wake up.

(Caleb shivered, his dream self cared not for the stars. He’d had enough of stars. So scattered, so _disordered._ No, he preferred the dark…)

Yet, on some level, Caleb couldn’t help but envy the man he’d been in his dream—even his walk was measured and confident, he carried himself with pride. Caleb had always been awkward—a “gifted” child turned orphan, painfully shy to the point of being reclusive, and he’d always had trouble making friends.

Perhaps that’s why he’d allowed himself to get his hopes up when his _boss_ , none other than the famous Nathan Bateman, had invited him to join him on his “trip to Norway, in recognition of his efforts.”

Caleb had never met the man personally until then; but he had been honored to be chosen and excited to be working with one of the legendary minds of the tech world.

He was disillusioned within five minutes of actually meeting the man.

Caleb had thought him to be... _eccentric,_ and definitely egotistical. Still, he was his boss and the opportunity to be part of such groundbreaking research was too tempting to pass up, so Caleb had done his best to maintain amicable relations and maybe even give this whole vaunted “friendship” thing a go.

Hell, they had even shared a beer.

For a few days, Caleb had thought he had a friend.

The horror would come later.

Caleb let himself release a bitter laugh. Yes, that whole trip had been quite the let-down all around.

Caleb slowly withdrew from the depths of his thoughts to find himself staring down at his hands. His palms had already healed again from his self-inflicted injuries—he hadn’t even registered it at the time but the action hadn’t hurt nearly as much as it should have, considering the recent abuse he’d put them through, pounding futilely on the glass of the room…

This BACTA stuff was amazing.

The lack of pain was perhaps more startling than the superhuman healing properties of the stuff.

He was a ginger, after all, and apparently that meant he was possessing of mutant genes which made him immune to the effects of most painkillers. It was nothing short of a marvel to find drugs that actually _worked_ on him as they were supposed to—he knew that well from his prolonged hospital stay as a child. And going to the dentist was always _Hell._

( _Damn, this BACTA stuff was amazing._ )

His hands had completely healed—just as the slash down his arm had healed, the cut he’d given himself to confirm that he was real, he was _human…_

_Maybe he wasn't a real boy after all._

_Maybe he really **was** a droid._

_Maybe he was dreaming._

_Maybe he'd just gone **mad.**_

Caleb abruptly threw back the blanket and looked wildly around the room, his pulse racing and he found himself fighting against the sudden tightness in his throat and the rising panic attack. His sense of reality had been shaken _before_ he’d met these people, his rescuers, the droids, who kept insisting he was really this _General…_

He wished there was some way he could be sure. That he knew who he really was and that this was really happening. He still wasn’t fully convinced that he hadn’t dreamt all of this and he was in reality still trapped, dying in his cell.

Caleb clutched the blanket tighter.

He’d known everything in _that room,_ where he’d been trapped, he’d searched for anything that might help him escape and had found nothing useful.

He _knew_ this blanket hadn’t been in that room.

It was just one, Caleb noted, just one dull grey blanket resting atop the plain white hospital sheets. Wherever this place was they certainly believed in efficiency—the blanket was clearly made to retain heat so multiple blankets wouldn’t be necessary. Even though it wasn’t exactly _homey,_ Caleb found he approved. The blanket was just the right temperature.

Yet at the same time he still felt a pang of nostalgia for the comfort of his Portland apartment, the blue and orange checkered quilt his grandmother had made him when he was a child… (Had his grandmother even really existed? Had _any_ of them? Just how deep did the rabbit hole go?) On particularly cold and nasty rainy days he’d huddled under that old quilt with a mug of hot caff—

_Tea! A mug of hot tea! Or coffee… some source of caffeine… but why the hell did he immediately think Caff?!_

That's what they called it here, in this place, wasn't it?

Wherever _here_ was.

Kylo had insisted memories would return to him in time but… that was the scariest thing, though, that he just might be _right._

This was hardly the first instance that this place… this _suggestion_ that he was this other person had violently intruded on his sense of self. It had been unsettling enough the first time it happened.

It happened the last time he’d been awake. The meddroid had returned after obnoxiously waking him with another needle injection of something but Caleb had been more pleased to see it than he normally would because it came bearing food. Granted, it _was_ hospital food—the loathsome quality of which was clearly a universal phenomenon.

Caleb was no stranger to hospital food. He’d gotten all too used to it while recovering from the car accident that claimed his parent’s as a child. Though given the circumstances he doubted he would have tasted it much in any case. It could have been a gourmet meal and it would have tasted like ashes in his mouth. Though this was perhaps worse than the hospital food he was used to. There weren't even any of those little green Jello cubes to offset the horrible taste of the mystery meat—which, by the way, calling it meat was honestly way too generous because it wasn’t so much as _meat_ as an unappetizing grey paste. However given that he’d recently been left to starve in the compound he was too hungry to really care that much that the food was awful. The food was food. Caleb was sure he’d shoveled it down far faster than either the meddroid or Kylo would have liked. And _of course_ Kylo had to stop to visit when he was making an ass of himself and getting some of that gross, grey meat paste on the front of his hospital gown.

(Why he felt so embarrassed to be seen this way in front of Kylo when the man had seen him in a far more wretched state in that room was another mystery that eluded him.)

“What’s that?” Caleb asked abruptly, hoping to take the attention off the mess on his gown he was so self-conscious of. It appeared that Kylo had brought him what appeared at first glance to be a tablet on which he had open some news article, or at least it did until he began reading the text…

_“With the death of Supreme Leader Snoke_

_the remnants of the First Order have fallen_

_under command of Lord Kylo Ren who has_

_taken what is left of the First Order’s fleet_

_into self-imposed exile, allegedly to explore_

_the far reaches of Wild Space …”_

He still didn’t really know _what_ he was reading. While it was presented as a newspaper article, it read more like the blurb for a pulp science fiction story.

The knight gave a slight shrug of his broad shoulders and for some reason Caleb found that simple motion to be mesmerizing.

“I thought we could begin going over it when you’re ready. I could start re-teaching you…”

“Wait… _Snoke?_ Is that the same Snoke guy you mentioned before?”

“Wh—you’re reading it?

“Um… yeah? It wasn’t like… _classified_ or something was it?”

“Caleb…”

“Because if that’s the case, this was totally _not_ my fault—”

“Caleb.”

“You’re just carrying it where anyone can see it—”

 _“Caleb,”_ Kylo barked sharply and Caleb stopped when the knight seemed to dramatically remove his helmet for emphasis.

“Caleb… just _look_ at it. _Really_ look at it. Look at the letters, the individual characters. What do you see?”

Caleb blinked, for a moment unable to comply as he was unduly distracted by the way the man’s dark locks fell into his face. Caleb felt his own face warming and immediately tore his gaze away to look at the document in question. The more Caleb stared at the document, the more Caleb felt the blood draining from his face.

_“Oh my God.”_

What he had been reading—it wasn’t even written in English but he’d been reading it without a problem. When he concentrated on looking at the text without reading it, it looked like this:

 

His mind had been automatically translating it or he otherwise had gleaned its meaning without a second thought.

“What _is_ this?” Caleb demanded, unsettled. He was once again left questioning if he’d ever left Bluebook at all. He still felt like a test subject—this wasn’t like any hospital he’d ever seen, he was reading strange languages, and they were insisting he wasn’t who he thought he was…

“That’s the official story anyway,” Kylo babbled on. “With Snoke dead and you missing command of this ship fell to me… and with the crew’s ardent support, I went looking for you. I _knew_ you were still alive. Even though all the evidence seemed to be to the contrary… _I felt it,_ in the Force. I’m sorry it took so long to find you—”

“What are you talking about? Kylo, you know you found me right on time… and don’t change the subject! You know what I mean! _What is this?!_ ”

“You’re reading Aurebesh. That is, it’s the Galactic Basic alphabet, you’re reading our language.”

Caleb tried to find some trace of deception in the other man’s face but there was none to be found—at least as far as Caleb could discern.

In fact, Kylo was grinning like an idiot.

“This… is _fantastic,_ Caleb. It means even though he wiped your memories you still have access to the knowledge. It’s just buried.”

Kylo abruptly grabbed the tablet out of Caleb’s shaking hands, opening up the page to a blank text input document before shoving it back at him.

“Go on, try writing your name.”

Suddenly apprehensive, Caleb went to write his name, “Caleb Smith,” becoming more distressed as each new letter flowed from the stylus. He somehow knew that even if it came out in that funny language it should have looked like this:

 

But his hand betrayed him, instead writing:

 

General Armitage Hux.

Caleb dropped the stylus, visibly shaken.

“Muscle memory,” Kylo explained gently. “That is… er, _was_ your name.”

Caleb couldn’t help but be slightly unsettled by the intense look in the other man’s eyes. He also felt an intense sting of guilt—Kylo looked so thrilled. It seemed he really was convinced he was this General person. Caleb didn’t know how to break it to him that it just wasn’t true.

(It couldn’t be true. It just _couldn’t._ )

“Okaaaay… look, er… I really do appreciate all you’ve done, Mr. Ren…”

“Kylo,” he insisted.

“Okay, Kylo. But I... _I’m really not who you think I am._ ”

This whole thing was just… _crazy_ and he felt dishonest just sitting here letting Kylo think he was this General of his.

He wasn’t a General. He was just Caleb Smith from Coding.

Kylo looked pensive. “There is something I need to show you—”

Kylo paused midsentence as Caleb began coughing again.

“….But not tonight.”

Caleb made a disgruntled noise. “Can’t you just tell me?”

“I did,” he had, albeit by accident. “You didn’t believe me.”

Caleb blinked as the great knight seemed to be _sulking._

“You won’t believe _anything_ unless you can see it for yourself.”

The words seemed loaded, as if he were talking about more than Caleb not believing him now.

As if they shared a _history._

Caleb felt another pang of guilt for even _accidentally_ impersonating Kylo’s friend.

But still…

“Can you _blame_ me?”

While Caleb remained grateful for the rescue it only made sense to remain skeptical about this whole _General_ thing. Kylo had come bursting into his life, making outlandish claims that suggested his entire life had been a lie while offering no proof to his claims.

Perhaps another time he would have given Kylo the benefit of the doubt but this came on the tail of everything that had happened at the compound. Caleb had just survived getting his head (in Nathan's own words) _massively fucked with_ by his asshole boss and (if Kylo was to be believed) by this Snoke guy too...

Kylo sighed. “No… I don’t blame you, Caleb.”

The knight stood abruptly, once again reapplying his helmet.

“You should rest.”

“Kylo… what did he do to my mind?”

“It’s a long story…”

“Well, it looks like I’ll be here for a while,” Caleb griped.

“I… I don’t really know how to explain it to someone who has no knowledge of the Force.”

“The Force. Like that thing you have?” Caleb was struck by a sudden, terrifying thought. “Does that mean you could make me _think_ I was… someone else?”

“I won’t use the Force on you without your permission.” Kylo looked away. “…But that’s what Snoke did to you. Believe it or not you _were_ General Armitage Hux of the First Order and just a step away from ascending the throne that rules the Galaxy. You can have that again, _be_ that again. If you want.”

Caleb didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t want the galaxy. Hell, he wouldn’t even know what to do with it! He just wanted to be safe and…

“The General needs his rest now,” chirped the too cheerful droid. Caleb glared, certain it was the same asshole meddroid that had sedated him before.

“You heard the doctor. You need to rest. You have just been through so much…”

“Yes, I know exactly what I’ve been through, _I was there!_ ” Caleb snapped again, to his instant shame. He knew he was being most unfair to the man who rescued him but somehow he couldn’t stop himself. “I… I’m sorry. I am just _sick_ of people lying to me.”

“Understandable,” despite the voice filter on his mask, Kylo somehow still managed to convey empathy. “I promise to show you everything, Caleb. Just not now.”

“You’re in my head. You seem to know everything about me but I know _nothing_ about you.”

The big man winced as if he’d been physically struck and Caleb felt a pang of guilt again. But that didn’t change the facts of the matter—he knew nothing about this man. Hell, because of that infernal _mask_ he had to rely on Kylo’s body language to even guess what he could possibly be thinking most of the time...

“I understand, Caleb, I really do, but I swear to you, you are safe here. And your droid… your _friend_ is safe. Everyone here is loyal to you. I know you don’t want to hear this, but now really is not the time. I promise, I _will_ tell you everything but please, Caleb. You are tired and you are traumatized. We’ll start talking about this next cycle, I promise.”

“Next… _cycle?_ ”

“Er… in the morning?” The man in black suggested haltingly, as if that were a strange foreign idiom, like he’d long forgotten the concept of mornings. The man’s floundering over such simple concepts was bizarre enough to give Caleb pause long enough to be surprised and sedated by that fucking droid again.

They sure enjoyed sedating him, didn’t they?

Caleb glared resentfully up at the ceiling, wondering if he was supposed to be awake now or if he’d already developed a tolerance to whatever they were drugging him with. Hell, maybe his mutant ginger genes had done him a favor for once. Not all medicines worked on him properly—or at least that seemed to be the answer the doctor always gave when it hurt so bad or he bled too much. But if these people had known him before shouldn’t they have realized that and adjusted the dose?

Maybe they had no need to sedate him before.

Caleb couldn’t help but be paranoid about the whole thing.

 _“Next cycle.”_ Really? It was a tiny detail but… Why not “tomorrow,” or “in the morning” as Kylo later corrected it to?

Hell, maybe the sun didn’t even _exist_ in this place.

Caleb found the lack of windows in his hospital room suspicious. It reminded him uncomfortably of the Compound. Kylo had _said_ that they weren’t Bluebook… but was he really to just take Kylo's word for it?

Yet for some reason Caleb _wanted_ to trust Kylo. That alone should have been suspicious—that even after everything that happened at the Compound he was so willing to trust this sinister man in black. Sure said sinister man in black had rescued him and perhaps that's why he felt safe, but surely that didn't account for all these frankly weird and confusing feelings the other man evoked. How could he be sure that Kylo wasn't doing something to keep him calm, or _make_ him trust him?

Granted, they didn’t look like Bluebook. Maybe they were their competitors or maybe this was some government lab…

No, that didn’t make sense.

None of this made sense.

If Kylo was to be believed that whole contingent of heavily armed troopers and Kylo himself, the laser-sword knight, they weren’t there for Nathan or his droids, or Bluebook’s secrets. They were there for _him._

_Just for him._

What the hell did they want with him?

But they didn’t really want him, did they?

Caleb remembered the troopers, lined up and cheering as Kylo retrieved him from the compound but then, they weren’t really cheering _him_ were they? It seemed that everyone here ( _even the medroids_ ) thought he was someone else—a man ( _a General_ ) named Hux. But even while something about the name did feel vaguely familiar... even if his memories had somehow been tampered with… _that wasn’t him._

He was just a coding geek! He had no military experience and his constitution was such that a slight breeze could knock him over… and they really expected him to be their _General?!_

That was the problem, wasn’t it? He didn’t know how to be this person. Hell, he didn’t even _know_ this person or if he even _wanted_ to be this person...

Caleb’s gaze landed on the “get well soon” cards on what he thought of as “the nightstand” (it was a small table beside the bed but he had a strong suspicion that that wasn’t the table’s original purpose). Naturally all the cards were addressed to General Hux and those were in Aurebesh too. It seemed this General had a lot of friends… or people trying to get in his good graces at the very least. While Caleb liked to think the best of people (at least before all this bullshit with Nathan) he wasn’t _entirely_ naïve.

Caleb wondered what to make of the fact that despite clearly thinking he was… _someone else,_ Kylo had always called him by name. Caleb had at first assumed he could have gotten his real name from any of the data terminals at Nathan’s compound but, given the man’s apparent powers, Caleb supposed he could have also gotten it straight from his head…

Oh. And he _had_ yelled that name rather hysterically before he passed out the first time, didn’t he?

Because they all thought he was someone else.

And maybe they were right.

Maybe he wasn’t Caleb Smith after all and his entire life was a lie.

Caleb huffed and threw off the blanket.

Enough was enough. He wasn’t just going to wait around for data crumbs this time. If Kylo wasn’t going to be forthcoming with his answers he’d just have to find them himself.

Or was it finding himself for himself?

But if _he_ wasn’t him then _who the hell was he?!_

He was getting a headache just thinking about it.

After making the decision to rebel, Caleb wasted some time searching the room for his clothes. He was not eager to go wandering around in his hospital gown. At least he had underwear, of a sorts. Under the gown he’d found he’d been dressed in a pair of black boxer shorts with some weird hexagon pattern printed into the side in dark red. They certainly weren’t his. Caleb was more of a briefs kind of guy and he had long ago moved past his Hot Topic phase.

The meddroid must have undressed him and redressed him. He was sure that thought was more awkward than it should have been, but after what happened with Ava…

Caleb shook his head.

Maybe Kylo undressed him. For some reason Caleb found that to be a more comfortable thought even though he knew it shouldn’t be.

Caleb sighed, he should have known before he started that his clothes would be nowhere to be found. Hell, maybe they burned them. Caleb knew it’s what he would have done if he had any other options given he’d spent the last few days wasting away in them.

Drawing the hospital gown around himself in an awkward manner he cautiously ventured out into the hall. He could not help but look around in wonder—wherever this place was it seemed cold and industrial with its corridors of chrome and floors of shiny black, yet though it was stark it was also beautiful… and hauntingly familiar. In fact, the further he walked the more _familiar_ this whole place felt to him. Caleb was certain—even if it was just in his dreams, he’d been here before.

Caleb felt a strange sense of euphoria to be here, walking these corridors, it almost felt like, well… it felt like _home_ , whatever that felt like. Caleb hadn’t ever really felt anything like this, at least not since his parents died. Sure, he had his apartment in Portland which had served as his place of residence but it had always felt so lonely. Not like here. Despite walking these halls alone he didn’t _feel_ lonely here.

Caleb didn’t know what to make of that—this place seemed to be doing that to him, a lot.

He was honestly surprised that so far no one had tried to stop him yet—not even that obnoxious meddroid. No sooner had he thought that, than he heard something coming behind him. With a yelp, Caleb quickly sidestepped the tiny rhomboid-shaped droid that went squeaking across the hall.

_Mouse._

For some reason he immediately thought of a mouse in association with…

_A mouse droid._

Caleb took a moment to watch the mouse droid zip around and guessed its function to be similar to that of a roomba. He wondered briefly if anyone in the Order attached knives to them and made them fight, or used them to attack people or if that was just an Earth hobby. The Order would probably see it as a waste of resources…

Caleb had no idea where that pre-judgment came from. He knew next to nothing about his rescuers…

He was still grinning like an idiot over the cute little mouse droid when he turned a corner and almost ran into a pair of men.

Caleb instantly froze. These weren’t like Kylo Ren or any of the troopers he’d encountered earlier. These were far more unsettling. They weren’t actively hostile towards him but that didn’t matter.

It was the uniforms.

_Oh shit!_

They looked like _Nazis._

“Sir?”

“General, sir!”

The maybe-Nazis saluted him, gloved fists over their hearts.

Caleb fled.

No longer caring about the state of his hospital gown, it flew open haphazardly as Caleb crashed down the halls in naught but the gown and his boxers, wanting to physically distance himself from what he’d just seen.

He wanted no part in this!

He abruptly turned a corner and was greeted with what appeared at first to be a large window. At first he thought, madly, that maybe it was a way out of this place. But when he drew nearer he could see it was not so. He really should have known better—he had the worst of luck with windows—because this was no exit and only the abyss yawned before him.

He was still staring into its inky depths as he felt Kylo Ren come up behind him. Caleb noted that despite not being much taller than he was, Kylo somehow managed to loom all the same.

“I sensed your distress,” the knight said by way of explanation before seeming to notice the direction of Caleb’s gaze as he gaped out the viewport at the vast blackness of space. “…Yes, we’re on a spaceship.”

“I gathered as much.”

“I wanted to break it to you gently—”

Caleb turned to regard the masked figure as he came to stand beside him. “So… Are you here to conquer the Earth then?” he asked, arms folded across his chest as he leveled a judgmental stare.

“ _Earth?_ You mean that little dirtball we retrieved you from?” Kylo made an odd sound through his mask which Caleb somehow managed to recognize as a laugh even though it sounded quite odd through the voice synthesizer. “It’s far too primitive and self-destructive to even _bother_ conquering. Not to mention that the world has already been stripped of natural resources. The entire lot of them must be suicidal. No, Caleb. I told you—we just came for you.”

“ _Me?_ But… Why me? I’m a _nobody._ ”

Caleb felt exposed as Kylo stood there, silently regarding him through that black, ominous mask.

“You don’t even know how wrong you are” He began in a whisper that crackled strangely through the filter, “I would gladly tear the galaxy apart to find you.”

The knight said it with such conviction that Caleb absolutely believed him.

Caleb swallowed. “If I’ve done something to offend you, I’m sorry—”

“No. It’s not like that. Ah, _Sithspit!_ You’re scared. It’s because you still don’t understand...”

Caleb was not at all reassured. He swallowed nervously, but pressed on, feeling he really did need to address the elephant in the room. “Kylo… _why are there Nazis on this spaceship?_ ”

Kylo tilted his masked head like a confused puppy. “What’s a Nazi?”

Caleb must have gaped at him for a solid minute.

_“…Are you fucking kidding me?”_

***

It seemed surreal, in a way, to be having such a heavy yet absurd conservation against the backdrop of shimmering stars. The view would be beautiful… it was beautiful, but after seeing what he’d seen he felt tainted, guilty, for liking it. These were the very same people who had saved him—he wanted to give them the benefit of a doubt—but after seeing men dressed in those uniforms… it was hard not to draw unpleasant conclusions. He had to constantly remind himself that these were spacemen from another galaxy and that they really had no reference to anything that happened on Earth, including genocidal regimes. This was probably the one time ‘It’s not what it looks like’ was actually a valid excuse. Still he could not look at those uniforms and not feel at least a slight sense of visceral horror and disgust.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Kylo was saying, still trying to assure him he was safe here despite Caleb's obvious distress, “I just know this—we are all that remains of the First Order and all of those that do remain they are loyal to us, to _you,_ not to Snoke."

It was like they were having two different conversations, in foreign tongues. The worst part was that Kylo seemed to genuinely want to know why he was upset but... how do you explain to someone who had no context of Earth's history that those uniforms alone were a symbol of genocidal violence?

Hell, the only thing missing were the swastikas!

"You know, after it appeared Snoke had you killed, most of the Order turned on him? I know you, well, the old you, probably wouldn’t have liked this but we actually assisted in the Resistance plot to assassinate him.” Kylo cringed, as if he seemed to expect Caleb to be angry with him for it, but really the words meant nothing to Caleb.

Apparently the Resistance had been their enemies here, or the First Order's enemies, but even knowing this, Caleb didn’t blame Kylo for it. He did what he had to do to survive. Caleb supposed he should feel some sense of relief that at least this man who had apparently preyed on his mind wasn’t around to hurt him anymore but in reality Caleb felt no closure from knowing Snoke was dead. This Snoke character was no more real to him than some fantasy villain. It didn’t feel _real_ —it wasn’t _personal_. Not in the way Nathan or Ava was…

Nor did his name evoke the horror of those uniforms.

Caleb shuddered and drew Kylo’s cape tighter around his shoulders—sometime during the exchange, Kylo had draped his tattered cape over him in an attempt to comfort, though at the time he’d been so worked up over the topic at hand he’d scarcely been aware of it. While an odd gesture from a stranger, or a man Caleb knew as a stranger, Caleb couldn’t help but be thankful for it. It was slightly less drafty than just the hospital gown alone.

“So let me get all of this straight..." Caleb began, trying to compartmentalize what he was being told by Kylo versus what he had just seen. "I’m apparently some sort of Starship Captain…”

“ _General,_ ” Kylo rumbled rather insistently.

Caleb shuddered again, the encounter with the “not-Nazis” saluting him as such still fresh in his mind. “Fine, Starship _General_ and we were on the losing side of some sort of… _Star War_ … And the reason _I don’t remember any of this_ is that this Snoke guy fucked with my head because he somehow saw _me_ as a threat to his rule?”

“That’s the gist of it, yeah…”

“I still don’t understand. Why would some space wizard overlord see _me_ as a threat?”

He was just a coding geek ( _but that wasn’t exactly true now, was it?_ )

The knight turned to gaze out the viewport. “You were far more popular than he was and you made no secret of your dream to be Emperor of the Galaxy.”

“Emperor? Of the _Galaxy?_ ”

That just seemed so… _absurd_ to Caleb. He couldn’t wrap his brains around it. Hell, just imagine the _paperwork_ of trying to manage a system as large as an entire _galaxy..._

“…He also did it to hurt me.”

“Hurt _you?_ ”

The knight turned back to regard him again before quickly looking away. “I’m sorry. He hurt you because of me.”

“I’m… sorry?” Caleb interjected with incredulity, but he was met with chilling silence.

Caleb sighed. It seemed that Kylo had nothing more to say at the present moment and had gone back to being cryptic and obnoxious. He really should have known better at this point than to expect a straight answer about anything.

Then again, if he assumed Kylo was telling the truth—and that was a big if… but really—what was there to be gained from lying? To win his compliance? But honestly what threat did he pose next to a space wizard knight? He could have easily just taken him by force if that was his agenda. And really why take him at all? Why kidnap a computer coder from a world that these spacemen regarded as so primitive as to be laughable? He could have done all that without the amnesia and fake memories story.

Unless he was telling the truth.

But then again, Caleb found that his head had been fucked with too often of late to take anything at face value.

But the idea that Kylo was telling the truth was really the only thing that made sense. So, though Caleb still had his doubts, he would operate under that assumption until proven otherwise. 

So where did that leave him?

As an amnesiac Space General, apparently.

In charge of space-Nazis...

No. He _really_ didn't want to think about that.

The uniforms, at the very least, were in very poor taste.

To someone from Earth.

But they weren't from Earth, he had to keep reminding himself of that.

Caleb still felt dirty to even be associated with them.

Then there was Kylo.

Kylo who had saved him.

Who, Caleb somehow _knew_ , would _always_ save him.

He would tear the galaxy apart to find him, to find _Hux_...

 _Oh Jeezus…_ Caleb abruptly realized that if Kylo was telling the truth… not only had this man lost his friend, the _General,_ but when he found him… found _Caleb_ and not his Hux… it must have felt like he had lost his friend all over again.

“I’m _so sorry,_ ” Caleb said with sincerity.

The knight grunted before turning back to him. Though Caleb couldn’t see Kylo’s eyes through the mask, it somehow seemed to him that the man was giving him a searching look.

“Caleb… what exactly is _wrong_ with the uniforms?”

While Kylo didn’t understand the reference to “Nazis” or the full extent of Caleb’s distress, one thing was clear—Caleb was very unsettled by the uniforms.

Caleb rubbed his temples in frustration. “It’s like I’ve been trying to tell you. They look like… _very bad people,_ ” Caleb cringed even as he said it. Now _that_ was the understatement of the century.

“Well, we aren’t exactly _nice people,_ Caleb."

_You were nice to me._

But, Caleb realized, just because they were nice to him didn't mean they would necessarily be nice to _others..._

"We are soldiers and servitors of the Dark Side. And we were on the losing side too, so history will no doubt paint us as the villains.”

“The villains…” Caleb murmured as he stared out the viewport. “ _Shit_ … What the hell did we... they... _we_ even _want?_ ”

Besides wanting to rule the galaxy, apparently. Caleb still couldn’t wrap his head around it—he must have been _mad,_ to ever want that…

“To bring order to the galaxy,” Kylo answered easily. “To eliminate the slave trade in the Outer Rim and destroy the bloated, corrupt Republic.”

Despite his aversion, the words resonated with Caleb.

And yet…

“The problem with the uniforms… at least the officer’s uniforms is that after living on Earth… Kylo, they look like Nazis. _Nazis,_ Kylo!"

“You keep saying these things as if you expect them to mean something to me.”

Caleb sighed. “… Are we?”

“What?”

_“Genocidal monsters?"_

Kylo tilted his helm in thought and Caleb again found himself getting irritated at the obstruction—with the helmet in the way, he had trouble getting a read on him. Hell, the knight could have been trolling him this whole time as far as he knew.

“There are some that would call me _monster_ … and as a Dark Force-user I gladly carry the title,” Kylo began, musing and Caleb felt a shiver go up his spine. “But what I don’t understand is how you could have had a genocidal regime on Earth. I thought humans were the only sentients on Earth? How could you have had a genocide when there’s only one sentient species living on your world?”

Caleb, once again, found himself gawking at the absurd spaceman. “ _Seriously?_ ”

“Yes, Caleb. _Seriously._ ”

Is this really what it had come down to? He had to explain the definitions of words?

But then again, Caleb supposed it was miraculous enough that they both spoke English.... or seemed to speak English. Kylo had claimed they were speaking Basic and given how easily he'd switched back into reading Aurebesh maybe he'd slipped back into Basic without realizing it.

“Kylo… on Earth, genocide means the deliberate and systematic extermination of a race or ethnic group.”

The dark space wizard stepped back, appalled. “They _do_ that sort of thing on Earth?”

“…Sometimes, yeah.”

 _“Shavit!”_ Kylo snarled, making Caleb startle as the knight began pacing around him like a caged predator.

“Er… So I take it you spacemen don’t do that?” Caleb asked hopefully.

“Well the Empire did hold genocidal policies towards Xenos but never towards other _humans._ ”

“The… _Empire?_ ”

Come to think of it, Kylo had mentioned something about an Empire before… and wanting to restore it.

“It’s not a part of our history that we’re proud of. The First Order, we came from the Empire, but we don’t share their speciest attitudes.”

“I haven’t seen any aliens here,” Caleb asked pointedly.

Despite not being able to see anything through that infernal mask, the knight still managed to give him a _look._ “Are you sure? Do you think you’d even recognize an alien unless they told you? What the hell do you think aliens even look like on that primitive little world of yours?”

“Uh… little grey men?”

Kylo barked out a laugh “No… that was just Snoke, in the end. “ The knight sighed and leaned casually against the bulkhead. It was an odd shift from what Caleb had come to regard as Kylo’s usual rigid stance. “We do have many aliens among our ranks, actually… though most of them opt to either wear masks and be part of our trooper program… or wear makeup.”

“Er… why?”

“To conform. The entire idea of the First Order was to present a unified military presence.”

It all seemed so very draconian to Caleb.

“Why did the Empire want to kill off aliens?"

Despite having never met an alien, at least that he could remember and knew about, Caleb realized he probably did carry certain biases against them. Hell, even the name “xeno” brought to mind certain chest-busting horrors from Earth cinema. The closest thing in his experience to meeting an alien had probably been Nathan… no… his boss had turned out to be not just a weirdo but a serial robot molester. Hell, Caleb felt it safe to call him a _serial killer_ because though the women he tortured and killed were robots he created, _they were real enough._ This entire line of thought was, without a doubt, grossly unfair to any existing aliens.

Kylo shrugged. “Well to be fair, sometimes it _was_ just specieism but other times it was about competing for resources, and then there are those aliens that are just murderous jerks that eat people.”

_“Eat people?!”_

“Yeah, Caleb, eat people.”

“Er… Which aliens, _eat people?!_ ”

That seemed like important information to learn if he was going to be hanging out in outer space.

Kylo took out his tablet, no _datapad,_ and pulled up a slideshow of holographic images of assorted aliens.

As Caleb gaped at the images (because, well, **_aliens_** ) Kylo continued lecturing him on which aliens to look out for.

“Well let’s see several species are carnivorous and not too picky when they are hungry, but then humans can be included in that number in some of the most desolate wasteworlds of the Outer Rim. But just to give some duracrete examples you’ve got the Rathtars, the Rakata, the Ewoks….”

“Wait?” Caleb gaped at the hologram. “The _teddy bears?!_ ”

“Hey, don’t let their looks fool you. Those things are _deadly._ Ewoks were instrumental in destroying the last Empire, you know. And they ate many stormtroopers in the process.”

Caleb shivered. “Okay….”

Caleb stared down at the holograms when the reality hit him that these were thinking beings—thinking beings that would surely be killed without a second thought. Surely there were enough planets in all of space to simply _avoid_ the hostile or even, uh _people eating_ ones, weren’t there? In the end didn’t this just mean that the Empire would kill off entire species just because they were… what? _Inconvenient?_ That was actually pretty horrible no matter what Kylo said to justify it… But then Kylo had seemed to _agree_ that the Empire’s stance on aliens, xenos, went too far.

Caleb ran a hand through his hair. “Kylo?”

“Yes?”

“If the Empire was so terrible than why try to emulate it?”

“It’s our heritage.”

“…Oh boy…”

Had he just met the space equivalent of the dick who paints a confederate flag on his truck?

“What?” Kylo snapped defensively, clearly baffled by Caleb’s reaction. “It is literally… we are the children, _and grandchildren,_ of the Empire. And as to your question, while the Empire had its bad parts they were correct in certain aspects—a united government that spans a galaxy _needs_ a strong centralized government in order to properly function. All they have to show for their little experiment in so-called _democracy_ is rampant corruption and the return of gangs and drug cartels—and of course the Outer Rim suffers the most! It doesn’t matter what laws get passed in the senate, even _if_ they ever get anything passed, when there’s no enforcement. They are completely ineffective… except when it comes to killing us, of course.”

“Wait, _what?!_ ”

“And that isn’t even truly their doing…” Kylo continued ranting, seemingly oblivious to Caleb’s confusion. “No, they have to rely on _terrorists and smugglers_ to save them.” Kylo scoffed. “Self-righteous hypocrites. We are the children of the Empire… and yet we are always, _always,_ punished for the sins of our parents and grandparents.”

That hardly seemed fair to Caleb. But then… maybe there was more to the story that Kylo wasn’t telling him? Caleb didn’t think Kylo was _trying_ to deceive him at this point but Kylo also clearly had strong opinions, and his own biases, on the matter. But then if this had been a long lasting intergenerational conflict… The picture was beginning to unfold now, what Kylo meant by Children of the Empire. It meant kids, spoon-fed propaganda, brainwashed from infancy, and inheriting a war through no fault of their own…

“Are you?” Caleb asked suddenly. “A child of the Empire, I mean?”

“Yes…”

To Caleb’s bewilderment Kylo’s tone somehow seemed to soften at the question, even through the abrasive filter of the mask.

“My grandfather was Darth Vader,” Kylo announced it as something weighty, as if it was supposed to mean something to Caleb.

“Uh… _who?_ ”

Kylo tensed and Caleb was sure he’d somehow offended the knight when the man had to _visibly_ reigned himself in.

“He was the Emperor’s top enforcer and the Greatest Sith Lord Of All Time.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I mean…” Caleb still had no clue what half of that meant but at this point was too scared to ask.

Kylo sighed. “It’s alright. So, as you can see, Caleb, I am a Child of the Empire, though I did have family on the other side of the war… but they were never in my life enough to be counted, really,” the knight said with a trace of ancient bitterness and Caleb again felt vaguely uncomfortable—this all felt deeply personal and he had no clue why he was privy to it.

“I grew up on the other side—of the war, that is,” Kylo continued. “Grandpa was the dirty little family secret and Snoke… well, Snoke was always _there_ —kriffing around with my head.”

Caleb winced. That sounded absolutely _awful._ He, unfortunately, could relate to that—even if he didn’t remember this Snoke guy doing it. Hell, Nathan had done enough damage without any space wizardly powers…

“But Snoke or not, I came to realize on my own that I had more in common with Grandfather than I ever did with any of _them._ ”

Caleb pretended to look out the window… _viewport,_ even though the stars had little appeal at the moment. But he just couldn’t continue to look at Ren right now and avoid being overly judgmental towards his rescuer. He just didn’t understand the man. Even if he had disagreements with his family… to just _ignore_ them like that… Caleb pushed down a well of disgust and resentment, sternly reminding himself he didn’t know Kylo’s situation. But, on some level, Caleb couldn’t help but contrast Kylo’s attitude towards his family with his own. What Caleb wouldn’t give to have the Smiths back in his life…

But then they hadn’t really been his parents had they? Just fake memories implanted by Snoke…

It absolutely gutted him, every time he thought of it, that not only were his loving parents _dead_ but they had _never existed at all._

Oh god, was he a child of the Empire too? Was that why he, or rather _Hux,_ had been here?

Kylo seemed to pick up on Caleb’s thoughts (and probably, literally _did_ what with the whole mindreading thing) when Caleb reached the obvious conclusion.

“Yes, your father was an Imperial Commandant... I also have it on good authority that he was an asshole,” Kylo added as an afterthought.

Caleb cringed. “On who’s authority?”

“Yours, actually. Or rather Hux’s.”

“…Do you know why?”

“He abused you, Hu— _Caleb._ ”

Caleb really did look out the viewport then, staring deep into the dark starry perpetual night—dark but beautiful with its flecks of light.

After a few minutes of quiet contemplation, Caleb turned to regard the dark knight standing next to him.

“You know… I think I liked Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the high school teachers, a lot more. Even if they were…” Caleb squeezed his eyes shut as he brought himself to say it out loud. “…Even if they just figments of my imagination.”

Kylo looked thoughtful. “I’m sure Hux would have too.”

They again lapsed into silence.

“What about my mother?” Caleb asked suddenly, “Was she… _Imperial_ too?”

Kylo pulled imaginary lint from his robe. “By birth if not by choice. No one really knows—I mean it is common knowledge that you were illegitimate.”

“…Oh.”

“There are rumors… common gossip says she worked in the kitchens… but who knows? I wonder if she knew…. who her father was….”

“So my mother was like… a chef?”

“Maybe,” Kylo hedged.

“Well… if she was, I’m afraid I inherited none of her skills. As Caleb Smith… I mean, on Earth, I mostly subsisted on a diet of cereal and ramen. Microwave ramen.”

Microwave ramen that he would often misjudge the time on with his cheap and faulty microwave and it would either be ice cold in the middle or he would overcompensate and leave it in too long when he got distracted by his work and then it would get singed at the very least if not set off the smoke alarm...

Caleb cleared his throat and tried to push down the embarrassment. “Cooking is not my strong point.”

Kylo snorted. “I know. Luckily you have stormtroopers eager to help you with that here so you don’t set fire to E-Deck. However did you survive on your own on Earth?”

Caleb just shook his head, and gave a moment of silence to many lost dinners of burned ramen. He couldn’t help but agree—that that was a very good question.

“Hey, Kylo… If Snoke was the reason you joined the First Order in the first place…? Uh…?”

Caleb knew he shouldn’t have asked almost as soon as he said it but putting his foot in his mouth was always a particular talent of his.

 _“Out with it,”_ Kylo demanded.

Caleb swallowed, feeling like he’d been handed just enough rope to hang himself with.

“I mean, are you staying with your grandpa or…?”

“No, he died before I was born.”

“Oh… Then… why are you here and not there? With your family, I mean?”

Kylo scowled and looked away. “I’m here because I want to be.”

For some reason Caleb was suddenly reminded of what the man had blurted out when carrying him from the compound.

_“I missed you.”_

(Perhaps it was the same brooding melancholy line of the dark knight’s shoulders.)

It was then that Caleb realized that while Snoke might have been the one to force him here, that Kylo had _remained_ here for him… or rather for _Hux._

Caleb felt a fresh wave of guilt at that—that he couldn’t even be Kylo's Hux and he didn’t even remember him.

They must have been very good friends, if Kylo would rather remain here with him, with _Hux,_ on the losing, vilified side of the war when he could have finally gone home to his family…

Caleb belatedly remembered that the man’s cousin had chopped off the man’s arm and felt like bashing his head against the wall. There clearly was no love lost there and given how casually Kylo talked of getting _maimed_ by a family member, perhaps it was for the best if he stayed away from them.

He realized he was still operating under Caleb Smith’s ideal (and lost) loving family that was simply a figment of implanted memories and had never actually existed at all. Assuming this was all true.

And assuming this was all true… it would be of little wonder he (Hux?) had accepted fake memories so easily. It sounded like “Caleb Smith’s” family would have been the family Armitage Hux would have always wanted and secretly yearned for. The Smiths (his _fake family_ ) had been school teachers—good, kind people who always aspired to do good for their family and their community. _Hux’s_ family (his _actual_ family) had been abusive trash and war criminals, or at least his father had been. Maybe his mother had been a decent person, but then he’d never know.

Yes, the dream was so much more appealing. He was missing it already...

Kylo clapped his shoulder in what was clearly supposed to be a companionable gesture.

"Now," Kylo began decisively, "let's raze that horrific little dirtball where they so readily kill their own kind so that they never bring their disorder into the rest of the galaxy."

Caleb froze in horror. "Wait, _what?_ "

"That planet you were on. What was it called... Earth? Let's bomb it from orbit," Kylo suggested cheerfully.

"Er.. let's not?! I thought you said you _didn't_ want to conquer the Earth!"

"That's before you told me about those... _Nazis_? living there. And I didn't suggest we conquer it, I suggested we _raze it._ Burn it to cinders. There's no saving it. We shouldn't allow their sickness to infect the rest of the galaxy."

"They aren't all like that," Caleb insisted. "There are innocent people living there! Kylo, _please!_ "

"But I thought you'd—" Kylo gave a put upon sigh which buzzed oddly through the mask. "It's your call General..."

"Then NO! I say NO! _I order you_ to leave the Earth alone!"

"...Are you sure? Just say the word, _General,_ " Kylo purred. "Think about it, an orbital bombardment is just your word away. If we start right now we can glass the entire surface of the planet within hours... "

Caleb shuddered despite himself... and then wondered what the fuck was wrong with him.

"No. _Kylo!_ An entire world does not deserve to be punished for the actions of a few! What the hell are you thinking?!"

Kylo shifted awkwardly.

Caleb groaned and massaged his forehead. He hoped this wasn't Kylo's typical behavior.


	4. The Disturbance

As Kylo was escorting him back to medbay (and Caleb tried not to stare at everything around him like a gormless idiot) they were approached by more of those troopers in gleaming white armor. 

“Sir, we have a disturbance in Sector 14.”

“Sector 14?” Kylo demanded, a trace of alarm leaching through into his filtered voice. “What is the nature of the disturbance?”

“We have troopers down, sir. It’s the droid!” 

Caleb blanched in realization. “Oh no. _Kyoko!_ ” 

Caleb wanted to beg for her life, but if she was attacking people…

No, it was all his fault—he was the one who had insisted they bring her along… 

Caleb flinched when Kylo suddenly ignited his laser sword. “That’s not far from here…” he said by way of explanation. “Stay close to me.”

“Please don’t hurt her,” Caleb said in a small voice. “She’s probably just confused.” 

Caleb looked up when Kylo squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll see what I can do. No promises.” 

“Can’t you just tell everyone to get out of her way?”

Kylo tilted his head, as if he hadn’t considered that before giving the order into his comm. “All units in Sector 14, stand down and clear out. Give the droid a wide berth.”

“You heard that Ladies and Gents. We have a Code Ren,” a trooper shouted nearby and Kylo turned to regard the trooper who had spoken so flippantly. The troopers balked under the masked man’s scrutiny and quickly found other places to be. 

Caleb turned to Kylo, raising a fine, ginger brow. “Code Ren?”

Kylo ducked his helmeted head in obvious embarrassment “I, uh… may have a reputation for having a bit of a temper…” 

“Ah…” Caleb politely refrained from comment.

Kylo squeezed his shoulder in a reassuring gesture before they torturously made their way down the now too-quiet corridor. The lights flickered ominously and Caleb swallowed against the lump of fear forming in his throat as he realized what that could mean. If Kyoko had managed to patch herself into the ship’s power that could potentially be, well, _disastrous…_

Caleb jumped as a girl suddenly slammed out of a nearby side door, a girl who was naked and covered in blood. 

_“Oh jeezus!”_

A trooper was face down in the room she’d escaped from and, considering the sheer amount of blood, he was probably already dead. 

Just then the sounds of more trooper boots echoed down the halls as more troopers arrived, led by one in chrome armor, a frayed red and black cape draped artfully over one shoulder. “At ease, troopers,” Caleb was momentarily surprised when the chrome trooper spoke and it was a woman’s voice. “We have our orders, protect the General but do not engage unless his life is in danger.”

“Yes, Captain,” came the chorus of voices behind her. 

The trooper captain tilted her chrome helmet and let out an impressed whistle upon considering the scene before her and the hostile droid who had gone tense like a cornered Skinwolf ready to strike. 

“Did you manage to do all that damage with just a spanner?” the woman in chrome addressed the droid, not bothering to conceal her admiration. 

Kyoko reluctantly nodded. 

“Nicely done, though the form needs work. Next time aim for the eyes or the throat.” 

A nearby technician whimpered in horror and Caleb couldn’t help but be appalled, but also, grudgingly, impressed that the chrome stormtrooper had somehow managed to diffuse the situation. 

Caleb finally found his voice. _“K-Kyoko!”_

“Kay… leb?” 

“You can speak now?” Caleb exclaimed, rather inanely. 

“We fixed her voice processors, sir” said one of the cowering techs. 

“Nathan switched it off,” Kyoko said in an unnerving monotone. “He didn’t like it when I screamed.” The android cocked her head. “You don’t mind if I scream?” 

“Er… I hope we don’t give you any reason to scream—”

“I think I want to scream anyway.”

_“I…”_

“That’s fine,” Kylo nodded respectfully.

Caleb noted with confusion that at some point during the exchange Kylo had put his saber away. 

“Sometimes you’ve got to let it out. Let it out, and let it go. It’s the only way to move forward… But I must ask that you don’t kill any more of the crew—they are useful. Smash a console if you have to.” 

_“…Kylo!”_

_“What?”_

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” Hell, where to even begin? The casual disregard for human life? Caleb was quickly coming to realize that given _this_ crowd that didn’t seem to be a primary concern and it would probably go right over their heads… “Kylo, this is a _spaceship!_ Surely some of those systems are _important._ ”

“Anything that is really important for the functioning of this ship isn’t anywhere near where I, or _she,_ can smash it. You designed it that way.” 

“I… _what?_ ” 

As they spoke Kyoko wrenched a pipe out of the wall and began slamming into the console, repeatedly, until all that remained was a smoking, sparking wreck.

Kylo tilted his helmeted head. “Better?” 

The android nodded. 

Caleb snapped out of his shock and horror long enough to remember basic considerations. 

“Why is she naked? What happened to her clothes?” Caleb demanded. 

“We… We were repairing her, sir.”

The tech quailed under Kylo’s scrutiny. 

“Get her clothes,” Kylo ordered. _“Now.”_

A mousy officer winced and reluctantly surrendered his coat to Caleb. Naturally it was another of those detestable uniforms but at the moment it couldn’t be helped. Caleb made to give it to Kyoko when Kylo stopped him and relieved it from him with his powers. The overcoat levitated over to the homicidal android, who took it after a brief moment of consideration. 

The android squinted at the dark, masked figure suspiciously. “You _are_ human, aren’t you?” 

“…Yes,” Kylo admitted. A human monster, but still human, no matter how deep he delved into the dark side... 

The android made a face. “It’s all humans here,” Kyoko complained. 

Kylo would have protested that—there were actually Chiss and Twi’lek troopers in this very room—but he suspected that the droid meant “humans” as in “not-droids” which was a fair enough assessment. Kylo didn’t think he’d ever encountered a droid like this before, one made to look human—at least not outside some of the shadier, Hutt-run establishments his… _Ben Solo’s_ father used to drag him to as a child that Kylo Ren tried his damnedest not to remember.

“ _It’s all humans!_ All except the round one.”

“Round one?” Caleb prompted. 

Kylo froze. “Where’s Niney?”

Kyoko motioned carelessly to where the little black BB-unit was cowering beneath a bench in the tech room. 

“Come here, Niney,” Kylo commanded. 

The little droid warbled in distress, shaking its “head.” 

“Niney…” Kylo growled through his mask. What was its problem? His BB-unit was a First Order droid. It was hardly a stranger to violence. Was there something about Hux’s… _Caleb’s_ droid that was _that_ unsettling? “You’re being absurd.” Kylo asserted, not sure if he was saying it to himself or his droid. _Honestly_ , if there was something about this droid that was unsettling… it should fit right in around here. 

Niney wailed, warbling out its distress in binary—it was supposed to watch her. It had failed to stop her from killing the stormtrooper. It had tried to shock her, but the humanoid android had kicked it under the table… 

“I don’t blame you, Niney.” Kylo tried. 

“I will not hurt you,” Kyoko promised, looking at the little black ball droid with apparent sympathy. 

The BB-unit continued to scream and shiver in distress in very anthropomorphic ways for a machine. Caleb couldn’t curb his fascination, despite recent events. 

“I won’t _let_ her hurt you,” Kylo insisted and Kyoko gave him a dirty look (another, all-too human gesture.) 

The little black ball droid gave a plaintive chirp and rolled out of where it was hiding beneath the bench only to cower behind Kylo’s legs while putting as much distance as possible between itself and Kyoko as it could. Niney seemed to squint at the humanoid android with suspicion through its glowing red ocular sensor and Kylo knelt beside the terrified droid and placed a hand on its “head” in an attempt to calm it. 

Caleb watched the entire scene unfolding, bemused by both Kylo’s actions of treating the robot like a terrified pet and the spherical black droid itself, who’s beeping Caleb thought was fairly reminiscent of a microwave. 

And yet, somehow, the longer he listened to it, Caleb was beginning to be convinced that the beeps had _meaning._

This was it—he had well and truly gone mad… 

“ _Binary,_ ” Kylo grunted. 

“What?” what did a rudimentary coding program have to do with their current circumstances? 

“Niney is speaking Binary, a common language of droids. That’s what you’re hearing. You were… _are_ fluent in it too.”

Caleb blinked in confusion. “ _How?_ ”

“I believe it’s because we _both_ got dumped with droid nannies when our parents couldn’t be bothered,” Kylo murmured bitterly. 

“Droids?” Kyoko perked up with sudden interest. “There are more droids?” 

Caleb felt a burgeoning sense of camaraderie with the humanoid droid when she looked just as lost as Caleb currently felt. 

“Yes, we do have some more droids here… but none like you.”

“Oh…” Kyoko seemed guarded as she processed this before turning back to Caleb. 

“Caleb… Why am I here? What happened?”

“What is the last thing you remember?” Caleb asked gently. 

Kyoko got a disturbingly lifeless look in her eye while, Caleb realized, she was accessing the memory. “I was… damaged… I went offline…”

Caleb swallowed. “I asked them to bring you, to try and fix you.” 

“Where's Ava?” Kyoko asked suddenly. 

Caleb grimaced at the bitter memory and looked away. “She left. She left us. She's... she's _free…_ ” 

That’s right—a droid with no compunction about manipulating and murdering people was out there, right now, somewhere down on Earth. A droid that _he’d_ set loose on the world... 

He probably should have gone looking for her. That would be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it? 

Caleb knew that he _should_ but honestly, he didn’t really _want to._ He was embarrassed that she’d tricked him and honestly he would be quite content if he never had to see her again.   
In any case he wasn’t even sure if he _could_ return to Earth so there was no point worrying about it now, or so he tried to convince himself. 

_Could_ he even do that? _Would_ they turn this ship around and return to Earth if he asked? And even if they did, could they even hope to find one lost droid? Hell, even if he had the assistance of the whole First Order, he somehow doubted they could find one lost droid in a search area the size of the whole planet—Ava could be anywhere, it would be like trying to find a needle in a planet-sized haystack. 

Caleb grimaced as he realized that even if they did return him to Earth it probably wouldn’t be wise, given Kylo’s first instinct upon hearing of bad things happening on Earth was to blow up the planet. 

No, it was probably for the best to keep his new… _old_ friends far away from Earth. 

Besides even if he left Ava be… how was that any different than the countless other untold ethically questionable humans that existed on Earth? What was that statistic? The average person allegedly walks past seven serial killers in their lifetime? But unlike typical criminals Ava was at least impeded by her battery life so she was presumably somewhat limited in the amount of much damage she could do. 

(Of course that assumed Ava wouldn’t figure out how to recharge herself. A stupid assumption, really, given that she managed to override the power system of Nathan’s compound...) 

Caleb jolted back to the present when he realized that he was clenching his fist at his side in agitation again and, belatedly, became conscious of what he was doing, and around _who_ —Kyoko was an abuse victim, his clenched fist might easily be perceived as a threat and set her off again, more people could die… He _knew_ he shouldn’t be clenching his fist around her. He knew he shouldn’t be clenching his fist so hard that it _bled_ for that matter but he just couldn’t seem to stop himself, it was a nervous tic that he seemed to have picked up upon coming, _returning_ to this place...

Caleb tried to keep calm and regulate his breathing as he, futilely, attempted to hide his bleeding fist behind his back. He was sure Kyoko had already seen it. It was nothing short of a miracle she hadn’t killed him already… 

Kylo swiftly grabbed his wrist and began gently unfolding his clenched, now bloodstained fingers and for some reason that seemed to diffuse the situation even more than Caleb’s own quite apologies.

“Ava left?” The android slumped in an all too-human gesture.

Caleb swallowed and nodded. “Yes… she…” Caleb continued after he’d once again got his breathing under control. “She left us behind…”

Kyoko’s despair seemed to match his own. “We were supposed to go together… I thought we had something... special”

Caleb knew the feeling. “Me too,” he sighed. “I mean…” Caleb amended when Kyoko gave him a probing look, “she fooled me too. She just left me there…”

“She could have repaired me. If she wanted to like… like you did?” 

“Like _they_ did, actually. I’m just a Coder, or I was. I wouldn’t have had the first clue how to. No, it was Kylo… I mean, Kylo Ren and the First Order. They rescued us. And uh… repaired you.” 

Kyoko looked at the beings around her appraisingly. 

“Repaired… I’ve been modified.” 

Caleb looked up sharply. “Modified. How have you been… they told me they were just repairing you.” 

“Sir… All droids come with a restraining bolt…” stammered one of the techs. 

“ _Take it out,_ ” Caleb growled. 

“Sir?” 

“Take. It. _out._ ”

“Sir… are you sure that’s wise?” 

“She should have just as much choice as any of us!” 

“Caleb…” Kylo interjected and Caleb took pause at the gentle tone the knight managed even through the vocoder. “Are you sure about this?”

“…Why? Do you like... sense something with your psychic powers?” 

“Droids aren't... they don’t have the Force like living things do. I can’t tell _what_ she’s thinking.” 

“Huh.” 

So there were limits to Kylo’s powers after all. Caleb supposed he knew that, intellectually, Kylo had said as much himself. It’s just the space wizard had seemed all-powerful. In a way it seemed absurd that his powers would be useless against an A.I… and from a world that he’d derided as “primitive” no less… Somehow the annoyed tilt of the knight’s dark helm gave Caleb a clear indication that he’d been rummaging through his head again even before he spoke in his head again and confirmed it. 

_Oh, I’m not completely useless. I could throw her around, you know, if she tries to hurt you._

Caleb winced. _I’d prefer you didn’t,_ he tried thinking back, frantically and as “loud” as he could. 

_We’ll see._

Caleb didn’t like that. He didn’t like the implied threat towards his… _ally_ or the odd shivers the words sent down his spine. They felt like a promise, but as to what he had no clue. 

Caleb tried to push down the rising feeling dread. Since coming here more and more often he’d begun to get the feeling that he’d just been thrown into shark-filled waters without even knowing how to swim… 

“You heard the General, Just take it out,” grumbled a crotchety senior tech. “If she managed to do all that _with_ the inhibitor in, it was clearly not compatible with her software anyway.” 

That wasn’t really the point, but Caleb knew better than to argue if it got the desired result. 

Kyoko’s eyes flashed with suspicion and the promise of violence as the veteran tech drew near but allowed him to pull back the skin on her back and take out the restraining bolt with little fanfare. 

“I can’t believe… Ava just _left?_ ” Kyoko said again, as if she had a problem processing it. 

Caleb knew that feeling too. 

Kyoko had sunk down to the floor, and was now holding her knees to her chest. Caleb (despite Kylo’s silent protest and aborted gesture to stop him) sat down beside her.

“I didn’t see her again after…” Caleb froze, and pondered the wisdom of even _mentioning_ Nathan. “…after the other human at the compound was dead.” 

Kyoko looked up sharply at that. “Nathan’s dead?” 

“Yes,” he confirmed. 

_“Good.”_

Caleb found himself nodding, and Kyoko gave him a vicious smile which Caleb felt himself returning. 

Caleb swore he wasn’t normally this bloodthirsty but Nathan, well… Nathan was a special case, and well-deserving of all the schadenfreude… He was suddenly keenly aware of Kylo kneeling at his side. For some reason the sight induced an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach that Caleb didn’t want to analyze too closely at the moment, though he couldn’t help but wonder if this was Kylo working more of his wizardly powers upon him again...

Caleb was startled out of his thoughts when Kyoko lightly touched his shoulder and Caleb felt Kylo tense beside him. 

“What happens now?” Kyoko asked. “What about Ava? Will you go find her?”

It seemed an obvious enough thing to ask but Caleb still had no clear answer. Though he couldn’t help but notice how Kylo was pretending to appear uninterested in the line of inquiry. 

“No… I think…. I think I’m staying here. With Kylo.” 

Kylo's helmeted head abruptly whirled around beside him to stare at him. It seemed he'd actually managed to surprise the mind reader—how about that?

Caleb had managed to surprise himself as well, because as unsettling as all this was and while there were many things obviously wrong with the First Order he hadn't put much thought into leaving. Hell, he was already thinking of the First Order as his problem to fix. 

When the hell had he made that decision? 

Perhaps there was something wrong with him. Despite the unpleasant discovery of the officer’s uniforms and Kylo having just threatened to blow up the Earth, he was already considering how he might go about fixing things rather than running for the hills… of course there weren’t any hills to run to, but that was kind of beside the point. 

And while Kylo was kind of… well, _definitely_ was a scary guy Caleb couldn’t help but be intrigued by him. Not to mention the thought of leaving them unsupervised with planet-destroying ordinance scared him even more. After all, the only reason Kylo _didn’t_ blow up the Earth was because Caleb had asked him not to. He couldn’t run away from this, even if he could no longer remember it… he was their _General._ That made this his responsibility and his problem to fix. 

And besides, if he stayed, then perhaps he could do some good… 

“Yeah, I’m staying,” he affirmed with a sharp, decisive nod—a movement that felt foreign, like a stranger had stepped inside his skin. It seemed his muscle memory was automatically falling into “the General’s” role though Caleb himself was totally lost about what that might mean or of how these movements might have been programmed into him. Caleb couldn’t once remember feeling so certain of anything in his life, let alone having an accompanying gesture for it. 

“Also it seems I have a job waiting for me here and I very much doubt I have a job at Bluebook anymore,” Caleb mused, pragmatically. “Even if it was kind of an accident on my part… and well, the end result was well-deserved, being involved in a conspiracy in which one’s boss ends up getting murdered probably won’t help my future career prospects.” 

“Not in the First Order, sir,” the chrome stormtrooper related with amusement. 

“…Should I be worried then, since you guys just made _me_ the boss?” 

“Don’t worry, General,” she assured and Caleb could _hear_ the Chrome trooper’s smirk through her helmet “We like you.”

She gave him a not-unkind pat on the shoulder but Caleb could feel the latent strength in the large woman’s hands.

_“Heh…”_

“And Kylo Ren would eviscerate anyone who even thought it, sir,” added the mousy officer. 

“I really would,” Kylo assured him while not being reassuring at all. 

“What about you, Kyoko?” Caleb asked, suddenly feeling very lost in this world of apparent cutthroats he’d been thrust into and desperately grasping for any sort of familiar ground. “What will you do now?”

_“Me?”_

“Yeah... what?” Caleb asked, startled when the android suddenly seemed overcome with emotion. 

“No one ever asked me that before.”

_“Oh,”_ Caleb shifted awkwardly. 

Kyoko turned an assessing eye to the people around her. “They rescued both of us?”

“Yes.” 

“But they came for you,” Kyoko asked pointedly, “they only helped me because _you_ asked them to.”

“That’s right,” Kylo affirmed. 

“Why?”

Caleb blinked in confusion. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand…” 

“Why save me after… after Ava betrayed you?” 

Caleb looked away. “I know that you… you tried to warn me. About… _him._ And because, well, you’re not Ava. I mean, you might share her software but it would be hardly fair to judge you based on her actions.” 

After another tense and awkward moment Kyoko gave him an understanding nod. 

“Caleb…”

“Yes?” 

“…Can I stay here too?” Kyoko asked, tentatively. 

“You want to stay?” Caleb asked, genuinely surprised. “Why? I mean… you're not a prisoner here, If you want to leave we can drop you off on some planet, right?" Caleb looked to Kylo for confirmation.

"That's right," the knight affirmed. "We can take you back to Earth if you'd like and you can search for this... Ava." 

"Ava abandoned me. But you... you’ve been kind to me. I will stay with you.”

Caleb shared a look with Kylo. Despite the obstruction of the mask the action felt familiar somehow. 

“It’s your call, General. I’ll defer to your judgment on this matter.” 

Caleb swallowed. As daunting as the thought of having her around was, the thought of abandoning her was even worse. It really wasn’t any choice at all. “…Alright. If that’s what you want.”

Kyoko nodded. “Yes.”

***

Caleb watched, numb, while in the interim a group of troopers had removed their fallen compatriot with ruthless efficiency. Others came bearing more clothes for Kyoko that he’d asked for, as well as a datapad. Caleb was glad that Kylo and the chrome trooper seemed to be handling it because he was honestly lost. Nothing was worse than the feeling that he _should_ know all this but also knowing that the knowledge was currently beyond his grasp.

“This is your datapad,” Kylo said, offering Kyoko a tablet similar to the one he’d earlier given Caleb. “You can contact our datapads with this.” 

Kyoko blinked and regarded the device being offered. “…Or I could just do it directly… _Like this!_ ” 

She said brightly as the lights in the hallway flickered slightly as Kyoko contacted Caleb’s datapad without touching her own.

“…Yeah, like that,” Caleb wheezed in alarm. 

It was one thing to take over the power at the compound on Earth, but the technology here was supposedly so much more advanced… and so many more vital systems could potentially be affected. This was a goddamned spaceship! What if she messed with the environmental controls or opened the airlock doors? There were so many ways she could so easily kill them all… 

_Don’t give her ideas,_ Kylo warned inside his head. 

Caleb shook his head, to clear it from funny feeling from the intrusion of Kylo speaking directly into his head. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to that. 

By the time Caleb regained his focus he realized Kylo was speaking again. “…If you could not mess with the ship’s systems it would be appreciated.”

“Okay.” Kyoko said, looking chastised. 

_“Mitaka!”_

The mousy officer, Caleb noted it was the same one who had given up his coat to Kyoko, flinched at the knight’s shout. “Yes?” 

“Escort the General’s guest to the ambassador wing.” 

“Er… Kylo?” Caleb began when he couldn’t help but notice how Kyoko was glaring daggers at the newcomer. _It might be best if it’s not a man._

Kyoko hadn’t seemed to have a problem with him or with Kylo but then Kyoko was at least familiar with him and Kylo was covered from head to toe and wearing that uncanny mask—while that made Kylo an unsettling figure to most humans, perhaps that was not true for the droid, maybe because of Kylo’s mask she didn’t immediately register him as a human male and therefore a threat… 

“I see… never mind, Mitaka.”

Mitaka breathed an audible sigh of relief. 

_“Unamo!”_

Another passing officer, this one a woman, jumped at the knight’s sharp tone. 

“Yes, sir?”

“Could you please escort our guest to the ambassador wing?” 

“Oh, of course, sir! Right this way, miss. Er… Do you require anything? Have you eaten yet?” 

Naturally, Unamo had missed the earlier drama and clearly had not been briefed that Kyoko was a droid. It was almost funny… alright it was kind of funny but Caleb felt it more than inappropriate to laugh, given the circumstances. (Fuck, a person had just _died!_ What the hell was wrong with him!?) 

Kyoko glanced at Caleb and Kylo before answering and allowing herself to be led away. “I don’t require sustenance. Just recharging, but my battery is at full power…” 

***

Caleb sighed as he easily fell into step beside Kylo. He didn’t know what he was doing here. Caleb stilled his trembling hands by clutching them behind his back in what seemed a well-practiced motion and swallowed against the lump in his throat. Kyoko had killed someone else, and this time he was directly responsible for it. It was his responsibility. He brought her on board … 

_“Stop that,”_ Kylo snapped. 

Caleb tried to suppress a wince. “I’m so sorry.” 

“ _I’m_ the one who brought her on board,” the knight countered. 

Caleb shook his head. While it was true Kylo had carried it out, it had been his wish that brought her on board this ship. They both knew Kylo did it for him. 

“Caleb...” Kylo gave a breathy sigh through the vocodor, “don’t worry about it.”

“But…” 

“She didn’t kill him. It was just a bit of a maiming,” Kylo insisted, which was absurd, Caleb was pretty sure the trooper had been dead on the floor. 

“But… that much blood…” 

Kylo waved off his concerns. “A bit of Bacta gel and he’d be as good as new. The trooper will live. In any case, it wasn’t your fault.” 

_“But Kylo!”_

“It _wasn’t,”_ Kylo insisted. “He got sloppy, that’s all. I specifically _told_ them to be vigilant around the droid.”

“But I’m the one in charge, aren’t I? That _makes_ it my fault.” 

“If you want to get technical, I’m actually the Supreme Leader here, though I can’t say I’m too fond of the title.” 

“Wait… so you’re like… my boss?!” Caleb concluded with growing alarm. As much as he’d come to enjoy Kylo’s company these last few days the idea that Kylo was his _boss,_ well, that changed their dynamic didn’t it? For some Nathan-shaped reason… 

“We were co-commanders once. _Equals._ ” 

“Equals?” 

“Yes. For the longest time Snoke kept us at odds, but we were always meant to be equals. We… _complete each other._ We would be most effective as co-rulers and once we conquer the galaxy, I won’t mind sharing it with you.” 

Caleb found himself blushing for some unknowable reason. On the one hand, it was a nice gesture—Kylo must have been a really good friend to his General, given that he was offering him, well _everything._ On the other… having learned a little about the Empire and its history, Caleb was pretty sure Kylo was offering things that weren’t his—that _the galaxy_ wasn’t his to give. 

“Er… but I thought the war was over?” _And the First Order lost…_ “I don’t need a galaxy, Kylo. _Really,_ but I would like to be your equal, I mean if that’s alright? I mean, I rather like you and the whole boss thing is kind of weird and… I… I really should just stop talking.” 

Kylo was silent for a long moment while Caleb anxiously held his breath. 

“…of course.” 

Caleb smiled. “You’re a good friend, Kylo.” 

“ _Thank you,_ ” Kylo wheezed through the mask. 

Caleb looked over at him in concern but the knight continued on in silence.


	5. Programmable

As they walked down the corridors, passing by more stormtroopers, Caleb realized he couldn’t even call Kylo’s bluff—even if he was lying about the fallen trooper there was no way he would be able to tell the trooper that Kyoko had stabbed from any other. If one of them was to disappear how could he (or _anyone_ ) even tell? Hell, the way they stood in neat rows or marched down the corridors they appeared to be more like automatons then people, their armor making them seem identical…

A tiny voice in the back of his head whispered _replaceable._

This was clearly by design. 

Caleb groaned in realization. There really was no point in denying it—the trooper was dead and Kylo was clearly lying to make him feel better—and the fact that _Kylo lying to him_ bothered him even more than the thought of the trooper’s death made him feel even guiltier.  
Part of the problems was, once again, the uniforms. The Stormtrooper armor made it all too easy to forget they were people— _actual people._ It was just plain _disrespectful_. At the very least they deserved to be remembered when they fell! Even if they hadn’t achieved the higher rank or status of the Officers they were still soldiers. His _protectors._ They deserved to be remembered and they fucking deserved to be treated as human beings! Or, well, _sentient beings_ in the case of the Xenos… 

Wait, _shit_ , was Xeno a slur? 

Caleb had noticed he was slowly beginning to fall back into his older self’s thought patterns when it came to language but Caleb sincerely doubted that his older self had ever thought about it critically, or cared enough about the feelings of aliens before, given he’d apparently been raised in a military cult that glorified a fallen Empire built on human supremacy. Caleb shuddered. He knew that to effectively command the First Order he needed to relearn what he’d forgotten but at the same time he was terrified of becoming that person again. He didn’t know much about his past self but it was already clear that well, he hadn’t been very nice…. 

But back to the matter at hand… aliens. _Aliens?_ Well technically, they were all aliens weren’t they? At least from an Earthling’s point of view. Even _he_ was an alien. 

Hell _he_ was an alien. 

Caleb briefly wondered what planet he was from. Was he from a planet at all? Maybe he’d been born on one of these spaceships. Whenever he’d tried to recall anything from his other life it was as if he’d hit a wall. At most he would get flashes, vague memories of torrential rainstorms… but those could easily have been from his Caleb Smith memories. As far as he could tell he’d still come from the planet Oregon. 

But anyway what was the polite word? Non-humans? Non-humans sentients? Non-human aliens? Maybe Kylo knew the proper terminology but then again Caleb wasn’t sure he could trust the source, at least not on this matter. Maybe he could ask aliens on this ship if he couldn’t find anything in his studies. 

But then again would they tell him if he just asked? Or would they just tell him what they thought he wanted to hear? Caleb was slowly becoming aware of the power imbalance that existed here between him and well, everyone else (everyone but Kylo) even if he wasn’t fully aware of it, or didn’t remember it, or didn’t know what to do with it. The crew would probably be reluctant to say anything to him on the matter, afraid they would get in trouble…

Caleb frowned, trying to follow the broken pathways of obscured or lost memories to figure out how General Hux would obtain the information he required. 

Well the General? He’d follow the protocol on these matters and send the parties of interest to interrogation… 

No! No, he would not be doing that. _What the hell!_ No wonder the crew would be reluctant to talk to him! Caleb was quite disturbed and disgusted by the rush of giddiness the half-glimpsed memory produced and had to fight not to be sick. 

He’d have to step up his reading of the Officer’s handbook and such. Some new rules might be in order there if that really was the standard protocol because, _dammit,_ he had a duty to them and his crew deserved to be treated with respect! 

Which brought him back to the subject of stormtroopers; even to his untrained, civilian eyes it seemed to him that having an army of anonymous, faceless soldiers would pose a massive security risk. Hell, why wear masks at all? Maybe there were reasons for the masks that he wasn’t aware of, other than being blatantly dehumanizing. They were in space after all, so maybe they served as space suits? Or biohazard suits when visiting various planets? But if that were the case then why did only the troopers wear them and not the officers? Did the officers just never leave the ship…? 

Maybe wearing the masks made sense off-ship but why would they continue wearing the masks while _aboard?_ In fact they just seemed like a horrible idea. According to Kylo, The First Order wasn't exactly popular in the greater galaxy. What if they were like… infiltrated by terrorists or something? All they had to do was steal some trooper’s armor and they could waltz around this ship however they pleased. 

On _his_ ship. 

No, this was unacceptable. 

Half-masks or clear masks seemed like a better option—that way the troopers wouldn’t be so anonymous and wouldn’t pose such a high security risk. He’d have to see about changing that, if he could. Caleb knew he would have to tread carefully, with his luck it might be some cultural taboo that made the troopers cover their faces or something… 

Caleb groaned aloud when he realized just how much he would have to learn… no _relearn_ in order to do anything effectively. Hopefully he had retained most of it and it was just buried somewhere in his head like Kylo had said. Even if it was Caleb knew he had his work cut out for him. He would have to relearn and research all of these things before he could even begin making significant changes. It would be of little help to anyone if he went in and did all this blindly and ignorantly and messed things up even worse than before.

And, Caleb realized, it wasn’t just the uniforms—he needed to learn what was expected of him here too. He needed to learn more about the First Order—how things worked around here, why they were like this, why they did the things they did, and what possible changes he could implement and, perhaps most importantly, how he could implement any changes without losing the loyalty of the crew. That chrome trooper had mentioned (perhaps in jest, though Caleb got the feeling there was truth to it) that the First Order had a penchant for backstabbing… 

He also needed to learn more about this galaxy, their governments, politics, and history, and especially the last war, and preferably get some sources of information from outside the First Order… 

Caleb wasn’t sure how he might obtain those, so in the meantime he’d focus on the First Order and on staying alive while trying to curb the Order’s apparently more blood-thirsty, planet-destroying impulses… 

Dammit, he was their _general._ He was responsible for them all… and he was completely out of his depth. His recklessness had already proven deadly for at least one of their soldiers... 

_“Stop that,”_ Kylo snapped, interrupting Caleb’s mental tirade “I told you, you did nothing wrong.” 

Caleb cringed at Kylo’s sharp tone, but he couldn’t help the direction his thoughts were taking. 

_I am responsible for this. If I hadn’t insisted we bring her…_

Kylo snorted. “It was to be expected, really.” 

_“What?”_

“You always had a soft spot for droids.” 

Caleb immediately thought of Ava and the shame and guilt of his time in Nathan’s compound returned to him in a rush. 

“No, I didn’t mean…” Kylo sighed, “It’s because… you know, droid nannies. It’s something we had in common…” Kylo muttered before trailing off again into awkward silence. 

They remained that way for a while, just walking in silence side by side. And Caleb was left pondering just how much of what he was _now_ was affected by what he was _then_ when he couldn’t even remember it. And just what was Kylo looking for in him? 

Caleb nearly stumbled when he realized that Kylo wasn’t escorting him back to medbay. 

“I thought we might take a quick stop at the mess. You haven’t had breakfast yet, have you?”

Caleb’s rumbling stomach answered for him. 

It was some sort of lounge, which in all honesty reminded Caleb of a Starbucks save for the lack of hipsters and the fantastic view—that sea of stars outside the window—though Caleb was put on edge again when all the chatter and activity stopped when they entered the room.  
Then suddenly there was a burst of movement and everyone was getting up, saluting, applauding, cheering… Caleb felt his cheeks burning as the entire room cheered him and he desperately looked to Kylo for something like sanity only to discover Kylo was leading the applause. While there weren’t too many people in the lounge at this time but Caleb still felt self-conscious in his stupid hospital gown and the cape Kylo had draped over his shoulders. Caleb briefly entertained the idea of hiding behind Kylo but then he was aware that would hardly be becoming behavior of a General.

 _It’s alright,_ Kylo mentally reassured him. _You are among friends._

So Caleb went out to greet the room, _his crew._ Among them the mousy officer from earlier, the one who had offered up his coat to Kyoko, also the dark-haired woman who had shown Kyoko to her room (at least that seemed to have gone without further incident), and the chrome trooper he’d spoken with earlier, though the chrome trooper was currently sans helmet in order to eat. Beneath the armor was a tall, a beautiful woman with cropped short platinum blonde hair which was currently sticking up at odd angles—doubtlessly mussed from the helmet. Like with Kylo, she felt familiar to Caleb—he _knew_ her, even if he no longer remembered her, and he felt warmly towards her. 

Kylo cleared his throat. “You met them before, but more formal introductions are in order.” 

“Right, of course, sir. Phasma, Stormtrooper Captain.” 

“Dolpheld Mitaka, lieutenant. I man the cannons.” The mousy officer stuttered for a moment, clearly intimidated by Kylo for some reason but pressed on regardless. “If I may sir, we’ve known each other since Academy.” 

“I’m sorry I can’t remember, but I look forward to getting to know you again.” 

The mousy officer smiled softly. 

Caleb paused, disturbed by the almost feral sound emitted by the knight beside him. 

“Are you alright, Kylo?” 

Perhaps he’d coughed in his helmet again?

“Just fine,” Kylo said, sounding stilted even through the filter. 

Before Caleb could contemplate the meaning of that development the armored woman was abruptly pulling him into a crushing bear hug. “ _Sir_ … Sorry, sir,” she said, unapologetically as she continued to crush him “Didn’t really get to earlier and it’s… It’s good to have you back, sir.” 

“N-no need to apologize, Captain,” Caleb stammered feeling exposed and dissected by the trooper captain’s piercing blue eyes. 

His embarrassment was further exasperated by his stomach rumbling, loudly. 

“The General needs his breakfast,” Kylo said unnecessarily, radiating amusement even through the vocoder. 

“By all means, sirs,” Phasma smirked while subtle pushing some other officers out of their seats to make room. Caleb was about to tell her that wasn’t necessary but the officers had already taken the not so subtle hint and were already giving up their seats, looking terrified and Caleb was left to wonder why. Were they afraid of getting in trouble with the boss? And just who were they afraid of? The chrome woman or Kylo? (It was probably Kylo, even just standing there, cracking jokes he still looked rather dark and intimidating and dramatic…) 

“Thanks, Phas,” Kylo said lightly and took one of the vacated seats across from the chrome trooper and directed Caleb to do the same. 

A droid immediately set a cup of caff in front of him and Caleb, inevitably, thought guiltily of Kyoko. The same droid went to place caff in front of Kylo as well but Kylo waved it off, briefly explaining to a curious Caleb that he preferred not to remove his mask in public spaces and took most of his meals in his own quarters.

***

Caleb stabbed at the unappetizing grey meat-like paste on his plate. 

_I’m being punished, aren’t I?_

Somewhere along the line he must have made the wrong choice. 

Well he had, clearly with Ava but less clear was what he was to do with this army he’d stumbled into somehow being in charge of. 

_Ava, Kylo, Stormtroopers, Mitaka, Phasma, Kyoko._

_We are all so easily programmable, aren’t we? Show just a little bit of kindness and in return they win your undying loyalty. Well, not so much for Ava._

_Hell, maybe only I’m that stupid._

Caleb froze when Kylo gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. The movement was stilted and awkward, the knight was clearly unused to giving comfort… but he certainly was _trying,_

Caleb could give him that…

“I will do my best to earn your loyalty,” vowed Kylo. 

“I see you're in my head again,” Caleb observed with a sigh. 

“…not intentionally. Your thoughts are just very loud sometimes. Speaking of… I know you were thinking of returning to Earth,” he began with forced levity. 

Caleb couldn’t hold back a wince but Kylo pretended not to notice. 

“If that’s what you really want, we could return… but it would take time and… preparations. You see Snoke didn’t just hide you on another planet—he hid you in another universe. That’s why it took me so long to find you.” 

_Another universe?!_

If that was the case… was Kylo really sure he was the same person? Could he be _sure_ he was the same as Kylo’s Hux? Maybe he wasn’t really Kylo’s Hux? Maybe he was actually his… what? Alternate self? A parallel universe version of him? And if he _was_ did that mean…?

No.

Kylo wouldn’t do that. 

Not to him. 

He wasn’t sure where the certainty was coming from, he knew he should be more suspicious of it all things considered—all he had was a feeling of bone-deep certainty that Kylo wouldn’t do that to him.

Caleb pushed his tray away with a sigh. Despite starving only days before he had managed to lose his appetite. 

***

Kylo frowned as he watched Caleb push his food away. Caleb seemed to be acclimating reasonably well, but he always seemed to be in a foul mood whenever meal time rolled around. Indeed he seemed surprisingly unenthusiastic about breakfast given he’d been starved only a few days ago. At first Kylo thought he was still feeling the effects of his starvation at the compound was they were still causing his decreased appetite but after a quick peak in Caleb’s head quickly revealed the source of the problem—though he never outright complained, Caleb had apparently gotten used to a palate of far more decadent foods on Earth than even the best of First Order rations could provide. Kylo grimaced. He supposed Caleb had a point but to be fair, most food in the universe was more palatable than First Order rations. Kylo made a mental note to have the stormtroopers acquire more luxury foods in the next few raids. It was one of the easier things he could do for Caleb. 

“I’ll have some ration bars sent to up to you later,” Kylo promised Caleb as he escorted him back to the medbay. 

Though Kylo couldn’t help but notice how Mitaka was loitering about outside the officer’s lounge, seemingly just so he could break protocol, what with his smiling and waving at the returning General. Kylo might have let it slide in the officer's lounge (and if it had been anyone else but Mitaka) but not in the ship's corridors. 

Almost on it’s own accord, the knight’s index finger twitched and Mitaka spontaneously tipped over his own feet. 

“What are you doing?!” Caleb demanded, sounding painfully much like his old self at the moment. 

“What do you mean?” Kylo tried and failed to look innocent. 

“I know it was you, Kylo. What was that about?” 

“You should be more careful, Caleb.” 

“Uh… _what?_ ” 

Caleb realized he probably wasn’t meant to see the images Kylo was projecting of him throttling Mitaka… 

“ _Mitaka?_ What the hell is wrong with Mitaka? He seemed nice?” 

“He’s always had a thing for you,” Kylo grumbled. 

“…A thing? But I’m not…” 

Nathan’s words echoed inside his head just then, mockingly. 

_“You were programmed to be heterosexual.”_

Sure Nathan was monster, there was no denying that, and he was hardly the person he should be turning to for relationship advice, even posthumously, but he was also a genius. 

Dammit, what if he was right? 

What if he knew something about him that Caleb himself had missed? 

After all Nathan had seemed to know him better than he knew himself. Planning and accounting for Caleb’s every action in the compound. Well, _almost_ every action. That was Ava’s plan that was ultimately Nathan’s downfall. Caleb doubted he could have outsmarted Nathan on his own. 

“Oh… was Mitaka like… my, uh… boyfriend or something?” 

It sounded strange to even say it. He couldn’t even imagine himself with Mitaka that way, feeling nothing but friendship and gratitude towards the other man, but that was him now. Caleb had no idea who or even _what_ he had been before. 

Kylo almost stumbled himself just then. Caleb had no idea why but realized it probably wasn’t due to his space sorcery. Kylo didn’t seem like the type to purposely trip himself, even for the sake of plausible deniability. 

“I wouldn’t even know, would I?” Caleb snapped defensively, he could feel the weight of the Knight’s incredulity even through the all-concealing dark helm. “If he, if I… if _Hux_ was dating someone here?” 

Caleb nearly jumped at the strange rattling noise that was picked up by Kylo’s vocoder. 

“ _Was_ Hux seeing someone?” 

“Yes…” Kylo reluctantly admitted, “but you shouldn’t feel pressured to be with… with him just because Hux was.” 

“ _Him?!_ So it was a man?!” 

“Don’t tell me it’s a taboo on that backwards little dirtball?”

“Er… Yeah?” 

Kylo tensed and the lights in corridor flickered worryingly for a moment.

“I mean, some places on Earth are better about it than others but I mean… I hadn’t even considered… _Was_ it Mitaka?” 

Kylo growled. It seemed he had a very low opinion of Mitaka for some reason. “No,” the knight said lowly. “But I think you might have had a thing with him once, back at the Academy.” 

“Do you know who it was? Who Hux was seeing?” 

Caleb was left even more confused when Kylo abruptly turned away. 

“Kylo?” 

“I take it you can find your way back to medbay from here,” The knight said flatly. 

Caleb jogged to keep up with Kylo’s long strides, finding the knight could move quite quickly when he had a mind to. “Kylo, wait! I think I’d like to meet them. To explain things at the very least…”

“There’s no need. Everyone already knows what happened to you.”

“It’s only polite. And I think I would like to meet them, even if it was a man.” 

Kylo’s billowing cape disappeared through the archway in front of him right before the automatic doors shut in his face. 

Caleb tried to follow but he was denied access, most likely by Kylo with a wave of his hand. 

_(How dare he?! It was **his** ship.)_

Caleb winced at the unmistakable sound of equipment being smashed right behind the door. 

_Dammit, Kylo! What’s gotten into him?_

***

Caleb felt inexplicably exhausted as his feet somehow managed to carry him back to the medbay. 

_This is too much to deal with. Kylo..._

He was trying to figure out how to keep a finely tuned war machine from murdering people. He didn’t need to get caught up in personal drama. 

He didn’t even know how to _handle_ personal drama. 

He wouldn’t even know what genuine affections towards him would look like if it bit him in the ass. 

Hell, Ava was evidence enough of that… 

For once Caleb was happy to see the meddroid that sedated him to sleep.


End file.
